Look the Other Way
by Candle Beck
Summary: Slash, Sam/Dean. AU, Dean is a cop and Sam is his no-good brother.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Look the Other Way

Author: Candle Beck

Pairing: Sam/Dean

Rating: R

Summary: Slash, Sam/Dean. AU, Dean is a cop and Sam is his no-good brother.

Spoilers: None.

Warnings: Violence.

Look the Other Way

By Candle Beck

The call came in about an hour before the bars closed.

Dean was supposed to be finishing up some paperwork, but instead he was sitting in Bobby's chair, flicking his penknife into a crayon-colored drawing of the Hamburglar that some little kid had done while waiting for his mom to get out of intake. Tacked at its corners to the wall, the drawing was shredded into lace, the wood underneath chewed up and soft.

Dean left his knife shivering in the wall, reached across the messy desk to get the phone.

"Sheriff's department."

"That you, Dean?"

"Why Missus Harvelle." Dean let a drawl come on. "You miss me that much?"

Ellen snorted. "Like I'd miss a bad case of crabs, hon."

There was ruckus behind Ellen's voice, staticky and impossible to interpret, but Dean inferred the glittering sound of glass and the bone-like crack of bar stool legs snapping. He sat up straighter, smoothed a hand down the back of his head.

"Got trouble out there?"

"Only trouble I got's related to you," Ellen told him, and then took the phone away from her mouth to bark a drunk away from the pickled egg jar.

Dean sighed. "What's he done this time?"

"Drinkin', hustlin', pickin' fights--it's a regular Winchester special."

Dean made a sound that wasn't much like a laugh, though that had been what he was going for. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, hissing between his teeth.

"Ain't hurt himself, has he? Or anyone else?"

"Not for lack of trying." There was a pause. Dean pictured Ellen at the end of the bar with the phone in one hand and her other around the neck of a bottle of scotch, dagger-sharp eyes peeling back the layers of her bar. "He's in a bad way."

"Yeah. I'm coming right over."

"You good to leave?"

"Got the kid here, it's fine."

"All right." Ellen let out a sigh that closed down the distance between them, roughened and resigned. "See ya soon then, Deano."

Dean rang off. He sat staring blankly at his knife stuck in the gnawed wall, daydreaming, but that was only for a minute. He had places to be.

The kid was minding the front, rat-faced and shiny-skinned, straightening his back as Dean came into the bullpen. His uniform shirt was ironed crisp enough that it sounded like paper when he moved. Dean was occupied getting his metal on, hands half-numb fumbling with the belt buckle. He barely spared the kid a grunt.

"You goin' out, sarge?" His voice actually cracked, and Dean rolled his eyes at the floor.

"Don't call me that, man. It's sergeant."

"Sergeant." Doubtful tone, the kid was always tasting words like they weren't to be trusted.

"Yes, I'm going out." Dean jerked his belt so it dug into his hips, gun heavy on his hip. He breathed out. "Some fuckers need to get their skulls cracked down at the Roadhouse."

"And I, I should-"

"Just sit tight, rookie. Mind the phone. You got a radio, anything happens you call somebody who knows how to deal with it, got me?"

He looked up in time to see a sullen expression pass over the kid's face, and it triggered something, a flash of Sam at sixteen when he was all sneer and vicious retort, distorted as if by acid. Dean suffered a brief spike of panic, and he rested his hand on the butt of his gun, reeled himself in.

"Watch that look," Dean said, not quite a reprimand. "I'm not the worst you'll deal with by far."

He hooked his trooper jacket off the tree by the door and shrugged into it, shoulders up against the lightly swirling snow. Breathed deep to feel the air sting like sparkling pins in his chest, and Dean noticed that it was a beautiful night, glassy black and still and cold.

He made pretty good time over to the Roadhouse, only flicked his lights on twice and never had to use the siren. The place was roiling, cherry-colored neon in the windows and steam billowing up from the vents in back. Dean spotted the Impala parked away from the entrance, taking up two spots but suffering from no visible damage, and he allowed that particular worry to settle. Big-bodied guys jawed in the dirt lot, dressed similarly in football jersey tees under insulated jackets, and Dean remembered, it was league night. Guys always went balls-out after a football game.

Dean drew some attention coming in, Ash calling "Hey Deano!" over the crowd and trying to get him a beer, but Dean kept his cop face on and made it to the bar, where Ellen awaited.

"Your family's such a pain in my ass," she greeted him. Dean shrugged.

"You keep letting us in the bar, Ellen."

"As if science has found a way to keep a Winchester _out_ of a bar," she said, eyes flashing multicolored in the neon over the bar. "C'mon, I put him in back."

"And he stayed there?" Dean asked, but Ellen was already moving around the bar and so he followed, cowboys and retail queens stepping aside to clear a path.

In the back hallway, Ellen stopped him with a hand on his arm, gave him a particularly searching look under which Dean tried not to fidget. He cast his eyes up and to the left, not blushing anymore because he wasn't twelve years old and in love with Ellen anymore.

"You're not looking so hot, boy," Ellen said. Dean swallowed, nodding.

"Yeah, I been working a lot. You know how it is."

"Just how it's always been, huh?"

Dean jerked his gaze down, wanting to see Ellen's face so he could better decipher that note in her voice, but she was already opening the office door and again, Dean had no choice but to follow.

Sam was sitting on the floor, his head bowed. He was handcuffed and his ankles were bound together with twine.

Dean started to laugh. "Ellen, what the hell?"

She lifted one shoulder eloquently. "He wouldn't stay where I put him."

Sam's head raised slowly, a dark-dawning sun. He had bruises on his jaw and a split lip, vibrant green cue dust in his hair, and his hair was obscuring his eyes, but Dean could tell how drunk he still was.

"You didn't wanna hog-tie him just to be sure?" Dean asked over his shoulder with an engaging grin.

"Oh, I was all for it, but I wasn't the one holding him down." Ellen jingled a little pair of handcuff keys at him, and Dean took it.

Sam's lip curled up, a junkyard dog look that fit oddly on his face. He was staring directly at his brother, best Dean could tell. Unhinged kind of darkness playing across Sam's features, and Dean took his knife out of his pocket, showing Sam that he'd come to rescue him.

"Think I got him from here, thanks."

Ellen wasn't having it. "Dean, it's the second time this month, maybe you oughta-"

"I _got_ him, Ellen," Dean said sharply, crouching beside his brother and not looking back.

"_Dean_."

Dean flinched, not used to that tone in a woman's voice, and glanced at Sam's face, close to his now and full of blazing eyes, tight-pressed mouth. Dean cut the twine from around Sam's ankles, pushed the handcuff keys into his curled hands and felt Sam's sweaty fingers slide along his, and then he got to his feet, went back over to Ellen.

She lit into him soon as she could, hissing but not bothering to lower her voice much. She must have figured Sam needed to hear it as much as Dean did.

"You know what's sadder than calling an eight year old to come pick his daddy up from the barroom floor? Calling him twenty years later to come pick up his _brother_."

Not letting his eyes dart away like they wanted to, Dean fixed his jaw and glared at Ellen. He could hear Sam getting shakily to his feet and Dean wanted to be back over there.

"Nobody else to do it, is there?" Dean said, pitched low and rough and he hoped Sam couldn't hear. "Not a girlfriend, certainly not a _wife_-"

Ellen's eyes widened, startled because neither of the Winchesters ever talked about that, but she went with it, cutting Dean off.

"I know you boys been through hell, and him in particular," she told him, voice like steel. "But you gotta come _back_ now. Both of you."

Dean shook his head, but it was only reflex. He had his teeth gritted and his jaw was starting to ache, this flickery thing happening inside his stomach. He didn't want to think about it, not tonight. He just wanted to get Sam home, make sure he got to sleep okay. Such simple basic things would make Dean happy, and he never got any of it without a bloody fight.

Ellen sighed heavily. Her eyes moved past Dean and he saw her expression change, the frank affection she'd always held for Dean hardening, drawing back protectively when Ellen looked at his brother.

"You all right there, stretch?"

Dean looked back and Sam was swaying slightly, the broken crescents of the handcuffs dangling from one hand. He rubbed at his forehead with the back of his wrist, scowling at nothing in particular.

"I just wanna go home," Sam said tonelessly.

"Yeah, Sammy," Dean said, automatic as breathing. Ellen took his shoulder, strong grip with her nails biting, and Dean was forced to look back at her, annoyed and vaguely guilt-stricken.

Ellen looked like she was gonna tell him off, brilliant anger in the fine set of her features, but the lines softened, crumpled as Dean blinked at her. Her mouth thinned and she put her hand on the side of Dean's face, shaking her head ever so slightly.

"You break my heart," she told him, pierced Dean like a bullet. "Every single time."

Dean pulled away from her, blushing bad now and feeling unsteady. He stumbled back and reached for Sam and Sam moved obligingly into Dean. Dean locked a hand on Sam's shoulder, the structure of his brother falling into place. He smelled like beer and gin and chalk.

"Thanks, Ellen," Sam said as they were leaving, his voice completely normal. Dean wanted to hit him so badly it freaked him out a little bit.

Dean put Sam in the back of the cruiser, one hand on the top of Sam's head and the other on his shoulder, and Sam didn't even make a scene this time. Some of the football players were watching, distantly familiar guys that their father had known, and surely no one actually thought Dean was going to throw his baby brother in the drunk tank, a communal suspension of disbelief accorded to the remnants of the Winchesters, but putting Sam in the back looked a little better, anyway.

Sam didn't talk, even as Dean drove past the drugstore and the apartment above it that Sam had moved into six months ago. It was just two drafty rooms, a dilapidated kitchen, and a mattress on floor bleeding stuffing. Sam was never there except when he was asleep or hiding out. Sam rested his head on the window, his face clean and thoughtful through the wire mesh every time Dean checked the mirror. Dean drove them home, the house they'd grown up in, the place Dean had lived since he was four years old.

He let Sam out and they went up, stomping their boots on the porch and stripping off their coats in the kitchen. Sam wasn't walking quite steady, reaching for walls and counters.

"You wanna do this now?" Dean asked, running the tap and waiting for the rust to clear out of the water.

"What."

Sam sprawled at the table, stringless and morose. His huge hands scratched at the splintering table top, scabbed and bruising again across the knuckles.

"Oh, it's gonna be epic," Dean assured him. "Gonna get into all the things that make you an asshole and all the reasons I should throw you in the fucking stir and all the stuff you're never doing again or I'll beat your ass. You ready for that shit?"

He banged a glass of water down in front of Sam, tsunami over the edge splashing on his hand. Sam didn't flinch. There was a line of dark blood bisecting his lower lip, and Dean found himself staring.

"You're not really selling me on it, Dean," Sam said. He took a long drink of water. "Might be 'cause I heard it already."

"Didn't sink in too good, did it? And Ellen told you to stop hustling her bar."

"I'll stop when her drunks stop paying off." Sam dug into his front pockets, scattering wrinkled pieces of money on the table. "Lookit that. Takin' you out for steaks, big brother."

"Sam," Dean said, exhausted. Sam grinned at him. A spot of blood appeared bright red on his lip.

"You'll still be mad at me tomorrow, right?"

Dean shook his head, but answered, "Damn right."

"Well, let's do it then. I'm rich and 'm tired and kinda drunk still, and I don' wanna. Bedtime. Come on, bonzo."

Their dad used to say that when they were little. Bedtime for bonzos, and then he'd scoop them up off the carpet, one in each arm, carry them to their rooms. It was from an old movie, something about an ape, but it'd become a family thing, one of the things that only they knew about.

Sam always knew just what to say to take Dean's legs out from under him. He didn't really want to fight, anyway.

"I gotta go back to the station," Dean said half-heartedly. He watched Sam stretch his arms out over his head, the flattened indentations at the insides of his elbows. "You should drink some more water."

Sam bobbed his head, but brought his glass over to the sink and clattered it down with the other dishes. He slumped against the counter, stood too close to Dean.

"I didn't mean to cause any trouble," Sam mumbled. His eyes were closed.

"You never do."

"Just so many assholes out there tonight."

Dean laid his hand on Sam's shoulder, careful. "You don't have to beat them all up personally, you know."

"You gonna help me out next time?"

"Sure, Sam."

Neither of them believed it, no more than either of them believed that Sam hadn't gone out looking for a fight tonight. Dean had stopped brawling with his brother a long time ago, before Sam had left.

"Come on, bonzo," Dean whispered, and tugged Sam toward the hall. Sam went willingly, pliant and easy to steer.

There were pictures hanging in the hallway, each slightly askew when compared to the others. Dean, ten years old in a ridiculous hunting cap with the earflaps hanging to his shoulders, holding up two dead rabbits by the ears, his face split in a blinding grin. Sam, on a riverbank skinny as a board and nut-brown, shouting happily with his eyes screwed shut against the sun. Sam in their dad's arms, pushing against his chest so they could talk eye-to-eye. Dean on his mother's lap, three years old maybe with her skirt balled up in his little hand and she was laughing. Sam and Dean and their father, piled together in the front seat of a wrecked Buick, John corralling his sons and palming Sam's head, his eyes locked on his boys while they mugged for the camera. John and Mary, in black-and-white, both of them barely recognizable now.

Dean saw the pictures every day and had all his life. He knew every line, every shadow.

Their rooms were next to each other, at the end of the hall. Dean could have taken over the master bedroom, of course, but he wasn't comfortable in there and couldn't sleep. He had moved his dad's big mattress in and it took up most of the space; now most of his clothes and stuff he kept in the living room. Sam's room still had its rickety twin bed, same posters Sam had had up when he was a teenager, soft-paged stacks of books wedged up against the walls.

Sam was falling asleep on his feet, angled into Dean's back, and he groaned as Dean levered him onto his bed. Dean scooped the blanket off the floor and tossed it at the foot of the bed. He rested his hand on his gun and gave his brother a considering look.

"You be all right? I'm off in a few hours, I'll be back."

Sam waved his hand dismissively. He started picking at the buckle on his boot, face in an intent scowl.

"Not sick, just drunk," Sam muttered. He got one boot off and chucked it across the room, then flopped back on the bed. His socked foot curled toes on the carpet. "Two Fridays."

Dean pressed his teeth into the inside of his lip. Motherfucker--they'd almost made it the whole night without mentioning it. "Not yet."

"I know. I know. It was Tuesday so now it should be Wednesday and not Friday but next-"

"I know, Sam."

Dean looked at Sam splayed out. He wondered if he should take off Sam's other boot. Unbutton his shirt and strip him layer by layer. It was an unsettling thought, dark red and overheated, and Dean banished it.

"You gonna go see him?" Sam asked, already half-asleep and worse every moment. "You gonna make me come along?"

Wanting to put a hand on his brother, Dean turned out the light. Sam made a small confused noise, one arm raising questioningly before he let it fall. Dean stood in the doorway, watching him in the muffled dark, and Sam said his name, "Dean?"

"Yeah Sam."

There was a pause, then Sam said, "Put a tape in?"

Dean breathed out a laugh that was more like a sigh. "Sure."

He went to the TV that he and his dad had rescued from a junkyard fifteen years ago. Dean had reconstructed it almost completely from scratch, jerry-rigged the antenna and painted the casing swamp-thing green, gave it to Sam for his birthday. Towers of VHS tapes teetered on top, and Dean rummaged around, tilting tapes into the filtered hallway light to read the titles, until he found _The Fly_ only half-rewound. He popped it in and Vincent Price materialized, arching an eyebrow and curling his lip.

"That good?" Dean asked. Sam didn't answer, and Dean looked over expecting to see him asleep, but Sam was silver-eyed and aware, watching the movie. Dean kinda smiled, whispered, "See ya," and left.

(break)

Life started with the fire.

It was just a regular fire.

Dean had wanted popcorn before he went to bed. He was four years old and if he could have had it his way he would have eaten nothing but Jiffy Pop and Milky Ways. He'd crawled over his dad's shoulders, hung on him like a scarf, and said, "Please Daddy, I'm hungry, I'm starving," until John had grunted and laughed and plucked Dean off him, swung him into his arms and said okay.

John put the Jiffy on the stovetop, wire and tinfoil and paper frying pan thing that somehow transformed into big hot popcorn thing and never failed to drop Dean's jaw, and then they went up to kiss Sammy goodnight. John picked Dean up and lowered him into the crib so he could peck Sam on the forehead, and then John flew him like Superman, Dean's arms outstretched in front of him, hands fisted and turned in.

His mom had come in, saying, "Don't get him too worked up, John," but she was smiling. She took Dean's head in her hands and kissed him on each eyelid, said, "My good boy, my Dean," and then she went to coo at Sam.

The popcorn started to make itself known downstairs, in snaps and hisses, and Dean squirmed down, punching at his father's legs happily, going "pow pow pow" and looking up to see his parents kissing on the mouth.

Dean and his dad burned their fingers, steam billowing up from the bowl. Dean held it on his lap and John held Dean on _his_ lap, and they watched a monster movie. From time to time Dean would say, "Too scary," and John's hand would settle over his eyes and Dean would be blind for as long as he wanted to be.

They both fell asleep on the couch. Later, Dean would learn that John had forgotten to turn off the burner on the stove. Later, he would hear about the dishrag left a little too close to the flame, and the combustible properties of the wallpaper in the kitchen. Decades down the line, Dean would still be coming to grips with how stupid and run-of-the-mill it had been, all the typical insignificant things that had doomed them.

He woke up unable to breathe. The dark was smudged, shifting, and it seared into Dean's chest and after a long terrified moment he realized it was smoke. The room was filled with smoke.

Dean didn't understand what panic was. He couldn't see and he couldn't breathe and he wanted his dad to be there but when he tried to scream it came out as a cough, came out as smoke. His whole body felt like it was breaking apart. He tried to run and banged into something and fell down. Lay crooked and trembling on the carpet and his face was slippery wet and he knew he had to get out of here but he didn't know _how_.

Then his dad was there, hoarsely calling Dean's name and Dean crawled over to him, weeping and terrified. John's voice broke as Dean grabbed him, and he dropped to his knees, pressing something big and soft and bulky into Dean's arms, telling him:

"Take your brother outside as fast as you can."

Dean's body curled around the bundle of Sam, his shoulders folding in and his arms locking into place. His dad's face was streaked with soot and fear and Dean had never seen him like this.

"Now, Dean, _go_."

And Dean went. Clutching his brother, he ran through the smoke and only looked back once. Just once to see his father taking the stairs three at a time, bellowing, "Mary!" and John was running into the fire. Dean thought he would die just from watching his dad disappear into the flames. No one could feel like this and survive.

But Sam was hollering from inside his blanket, tiny legs kicking ineffectually, and Dean thought, _sammy_, and it let him move again.

Dean sat on the sidewalk with his baby brother sobbing in his arms, staring at the picture of his house being slowly consumed. He wiped at Sam's face with his fingers but that only smeared the ash around. Dean was hyperventilating, trying to shush Sam but his voice wouldn't work. The harder Sam cried, the harder Dean cried.

It was years before their father emerged from the fire. A whole side of the house buckled and collapsed, a great spray of spark and glass, and Dean tucked Sam into his neck so he could hide his face as he watched, rocking back and forth. _got sammy_, he kept thinking, _sammy's right here_. They'd always been so careful with him, cupping Dean's hand around the back of Sam's head, showing him how the milk couldn't be too hot, never letting Dean give him any candy. Because Sam was just a baby and almost anything could hurt him and Dean understood all that, appreciated that he had once been little like Sam, and one day Sam would be big like him.

But Sam was okay, which meant Dean's dad had to be okay, and his mom too. If Sam, tiny Sam with his balled fists like shooter marbles, if Sam wasn't hurt then Dean's mom and dad couldn't be hurt.

Years and years, and then John came stumbling out the front, huge staggering steps, wracked by coughing, and he barely got off the stoop before pitching forward on the grass.

Dean screamed, "Daddy!" He wanted to run to him but he couldn't put Sam down, couldn't just leave Sam on the sidewalk no matter how bad his heart was clamoring.

Other people were there by then, though, neighbors in robes and fluffy slippers, and a couple of them ran and grabbed John and hauled him away from the gnashing heat. He wasn't moving and Dean knew what dead people looked like, he'd seen on TV. Dean was crying so hard it felt like being held underwater.

Holding Sam to him, Dean got to his feet and got over to his father, pushing through legs and skidding on his knees. Someone was saying, "Dean," over and over again, pressing their hand into his hair, but it wasn't Dean's mom or his dad and so he didn't care.

"I got him," Dean managed to say, trying to tug the blanket off Sam's face so John could see. His dad's shirt, well-worn army T-shirt that Dean wore as pajamas sometimes, it was smoldering, blackened and torn. "Sam's okay, Dad, I got him, see."

His dad was still for a very long time, and then he stuttered on a groan, his big shoulders shifting on the grass. Dean gasped, pressed closer on his knees as John's bloodshot eyes came open.

"Dean."

Dean nodded fast. Sirens were splitting the night, echoing and vast and everything was so scary and weird right now.

"Did like you said, I got Sam," Dean told his dad, and John's hand rose shakily, touching the top of Sam's head and leaving another fingerprint of black soot. His dad was crying too, Dean noticed, and it made something go small inside him.

"Dad?" Dean patted at his father's wrist, and John took Dean's little hand, swallowed it up inside his own. "Where's Mom?"

For some reason, that had only made his dad cry harder.

(break)

They left Lawrence almost immediately.

Dean had no memory of any kind of funeral service, though he assumed there must have been, he definitely wasn't gonna ask his dad for confirmation. He remembered a few days spent in other people's homes, sunny houses where he and Sam lay around on the floor watching _Rocky and Bullwinkle_ and Dean explained to Sam why stuff was funny so that Sam would know for when he got bigger. He ate a lot of strange meals with noodles. When he thought about his mom it felt like knives were going in him, so he tried to stop.

He wanted his dad around all the time, which was no different than usual except now he couldn't move or speak or breathe if his dad wasn't. It was like getting caught in a trap, smashed-chest, frozen dry-eyed, everything whited out of him except for the fact that his dad wasn't there.

Dean hated the feeling like he'd never hated anything in his life. Fire made it happen too. The edgeless gunshot sound of popping corn. And, oddly, the whole idea of airplanes.

Terror was a word he learned later. It remained Dean's least favorite emotion, the debilitation of it, the helplessness.

But it was a few days at most, and then John finally got out of Kansas for good. Dean liked to think that he remembered the drive north, but he was probably getting it mixed up with other things. The trip in his head took place entirely at night, him and Sammy in the backseat and Dean had a flashlight to play with and Sammy was still wrapped up in that charred yellow blanket and he could see his father's hands on the wheel, his leather-jacketed arm, but that was all.

John took them to South Dakota, a spot rural nothing called Kingston. He had a friend there, Bobby, and he left Dean and Sam with him. He didn't come back for two months.

A decade passed before Dean understood why his dad had done that.

He had never told Sam, and as far as Dean knew, neither had Bobby. Sam had enough ammunition against John as it was.

Dean didn't eat for a week after his dad left, felt himself draw thin and pale and he kept picturing Casper the Friendly Ghost, wisp of a boy vulnerable to strong winds. He spent whole hours just watching Sam, hunched over his lap as his legs went numb. He and his brother were always in the same room no matter what.

He never knew what Bobby had done to get John on the phone at that point. John had been coarse and broken-voiced, speaking through rocks, but he'd told Dean, "I swear to you I am coming back," and Dean had been able to keep down his TV dinner that night.

Bobby started calling him runt way back then, runt and Deano, first person ever to call him that too, and taught him how to fix coffee the way Bobby liked it so that it would never taste right to Dean otherwise. He gave Dean stuff to do, hobbies to pick up for a day or two, and illuminated small corners of the world to him. He let Dean sleep in the crib with Sam for a few days, before fashioning a set of removable rails for Dean's bed and letting them both sleep there.

It was probably the perfect place to leave them, in retrospect. Bobby had certainly had Dean at "idjit," and it wasn't like John was in any kind of shape to take care of them himself.

It was a little more surprising that when John came back, they had all stayed.

Till he was about seven, Dean had honestly believed that at some point they would go home to Lawrence. He'd gotten it lodged in his head that the house was being fixed, rebuilt, and someday his dad would get a phone call saying it was ready for them again. New paint and new toys and everything would go back to normal then.

It had taken him awhile to shake the residue of that particular childhood dream.

The little town in the Black Hills where John's friend Bobby lived wasn't a terrible place to grow up, though. Kingston had a church and a couple of bars and a baseball field and Dean thought that was the bare minimum necessary for survival. He and Sam both liked tramping around the woods and they both liked playing hide-and-go-seek in the salvage yard that John bought off Bobby when Bobby decided to become a cop. Dean liked knowing the town as well as he did, all the good hiding places and most convenient escape routes. He thought that Sam had liked the quiet, when they were younger, but now Dean wasn't sure he'd been properly interpreting all the time Sam had spent off on his own.

Sam and Dean camped out for weeks at a time in the summers, till their hair was so greasy they could spike it up with their hands. Flashlight beams bouncing crazily off the trees stretching up above them, they lay on their backs and Dean made up stupid stories and Sam always listened. In the fall, they went hunting with their father. In the winter, they made forts out of the furniture when the whole town was snowed in.

John did what he could, but he'd never signed up to raise two small boys all on his own. He never got over the two minutes he'd been juggling Dean and hot popcorn and laughing and had forgotten to turn off the burner. Dean never got over how he'd begged for Jiffy Pop that night, how he'd talked his dad into it.

He cut his father a lot of slack.

Dean was buying the groceries by the time he was eight and forging their dad's signature on bills at nine. He was working as a shelver at the store by twelve, and by fifteen Bobby had set him up as a general gofer for the sheriff's department. Bobby got the top job six months before Dean graduated high school, and with his path clear before him he didn't even take the summer off, went right into training to join the force.

In Lawrence, Dean had wanted to be a fireman--it was being able to drive the truck, mostly. In Kingston, he was always meant to be a cop.

John and Bobby were proud of him and Sam didn't really understand but Sam didn't understand anything about Dean back then. Dean wanted a job where he helped people, never having bothered to define it in greater detail than that and taking the first obvious opportunity. In a town this size, police work narrowed down to domestic calls and drunks, generally. Dean was always on the side of right, but not once in ten years had he saved anyone's life.

Most days, Dean didn't really like the job all that much, but he still got up.

(break)

Sam was still staying at the house a week or so after Dean brought him back from Ellen's. Dean never expected to find him there when he came in at odd hours, resigned to the empty house, but every time: Sam.

Sam in shirts that Dean hadn't seen since his brother was in high school, smelling of must and Dean's soap, eating cereal on the couch with the spoon clutched in his fist like a five year old (only with cereal would Sam hold the spoon like that--cereal with marshmallows, most often), watching some George Romero flick and sliding his eyes over to Dean when Dean came in, catching at Dean's edges and tugging low in his stomach. Sam, barefoot and damp-haired in the middle of the night, whenever Dean made it home.

Just the two of them banging around the house, living like teenagers again, like Dad was just off on a bender. Sam was supposed to be working but he wasn't and Dean didn't want to get into it. Sam made him french toast every morning, fried in butter with honey instead of syrup. He made coffee all the time, Bobby's way because Dean had taught _him_, and spiked it with scotch whether it was dark outside or not.

Dean just kinda went along with it. He just wanted Sam to stay for a little while. Sam holed up at the family home meant he wasn't getting his skull kicked in somewhere. Dean was tired of getting calls about him.

But Sam seemed to be doing better. Not drinking less, god forbid Sam drink less, but not as mean from it, which was a step.

At work, Dean tormented the rookie and ate lunch in Bobby's office, sandwiches in nests of white paper, cardboard boxes with chicken and fries. Bobby had his boots up on the desk; he was the only one allowed to do that.

"You comin' over for the game tonight?" Bobby asked him.

Dean swiped a pair of fries through ketchup. "Doubt it."

"Hell, you ain't been by to clean us out in 'bout a month."

"Stealing from senior citizens, I don't know, something on it never really sat right with me."

"Senior ass-kicker, I think you mean." Bobby creaked back in his chair, giving Dean an old look. "You trick some girl into going out with you, runt?"

Dean half-smiled. "Exhausted the town. Lookin' to break into Sturgis."

"All the luck in the world on that, but meantime, whyn't you get your sorry ass to a poker game?"

Tensing slightly, not really a flinch, Dean kept his eyes on Bobby, steady and unremarkable. His fingers smudged grease on the cardboard box, hard to get a grip.

"Sam's staying at the house, you know. Kinda sick or something, I dunno. Tryin' to keep an eye."

"Boy," Bobby sighed, and Dean looked at him sharply, but Bobby wasn't saying it to scold, just a general expression of ineffable emotion. "The two of you back in that house, it'll never stay standing."

Bobby's favorite stories to dredge up were the various times Dean and his brother had almost burned the place down. Considering most of the times had perfectly reasonable explanations and the most recent was fifteen years ago, it was getting kind of old. Dean settled for rolling his eyes, taking a sip of Coke.

"Just for a little while. He's just gettin' his head on straight."

"No offense or nothing, but that might take a little longer than a little while."

"Um, offense taken." Dean fired a grin to show that he was kidding, but it hung strange and he doubted the truth of it. "Don't talk shit about my brother."

Bobby scoffed. "How 'bout I limit myself to direct quotes from you?"

Dean waved his Coke dismissively, something sour biting under the sweetness. "How 'bout you just keep your damn mouth shut?"

"Hey." Stone lines carved across Bobby's face. Hard cutting tone, don't-fuck-around-with-me-boy. "We ain't always friends in here, sergeant."

Dean flushed. He poked at the box with a fry. "Sorry, sir."

There was a pause. Dean could hear the rookie's uneven cadence stumbling after the lilt of the secretary, a truck backfiring outside. He was sick of everybody talking about Sam like this. Everybody knew what had happened, they couldn't expect him to just bounce back like nothing.

"Bit on edge, there, Deano?"

Exhaling, Dean glanced up and found Bobby's usual look of long-suffering aggravation. It was reassuring, the same look Bobby'd been giving him for a quarter-century, but Dean still didn't want to talk about it.

"I'm fine. Little tired, maybe."

"Shouldn't be takin' all those swing shifts-"

"World runs on money, sheriff," Dean reminded him. Bobby snorted, shaking his head.

"And here I still remember you trading in army men." Bobby balled his wrapper up and pitched it into the bin next to the bookshelf. He cleared his throat. "You know I can always help you boys out if it's-"

"No," Dean said quickly. He flashed an insincere smile that Bobby visibly read as bullshit. "We're all right. Sam's going back to work soon, so."

Bobby kept his expression skeptical, but didn't say anything else about it, and for that Dean was thankful. All these people in this town who thought that just because they'd watched Sam and Dean grow up, they had license to intrude. Sometimes Dean didn't know why he even bothered making friends.

"Friday," Bobby said instead. "You goin' down?"

Dean sighed, rubbing at his shoulder. "Yeah."

"No-good brother goin' with you?"

"'Course."

"Awright, well, you be sure to tell him to mind the limit. I got no pull in Iowa."

Dean nodded, got to his feet. He dumped the chicken bones and grease-printed cardboard box into the trash, wiping his fingers on his shirt.

"Don't mess up your uniform," Bobby complained gruffly. Dean shot him a salute, left the office.

The afternoon and evening slid past, tattered pieces like the snow falling out the window. A pair of pick-up trucks smashed up near the ravine, no injuries but one of the drivers was swaying drunk and Dean hauled him in. Steve Wandell shot a rabid dog on the outskirts of his property and Dean had to go out to collect the carcass. There was a collar buried in matted, bloodstained fur, a numbing silver tag in the shape of a bone. Dean called the number, over in the next county, and the man who answered broke into tears when Dean told him his dog was dead.

Dean picked up some boxes of macaroni and cheese and a couple sixers on the way home. He ran into Troy Malachy and some of the other guys he'd played football with in high school and got into a discussion about the best rifles currently available for purchase in a two hundred mile radius. They invited him out to the Spoke and Dean begged off, condensation soaking through the paper bag and making his fingers freeze in claw-like shapes. His mind was stuck on his brother, wondering if Sam would still be there when Dean got home.

Sam was.

He was watching one of the _Child's Play_ movies--Dean probably could have figured out number, but he wasn't in the mood--and cleaning one of Dean's guns.

"Dude," Dean said in disgust as he unbuckled his uniform belt and hung it up. "Who the hell said you could touch my stuff?"

Sam flicked his head to get his hair out of his eyes, and Dean wished he'd get it cut already. Sam looked falsely accused, wide-eyed and innocent.

"I'm helping you out."

"I keep 'em plenty clean, Sam. Gimme that." He made a snatch for it but Sam fell back into the couch with the gun, a Colt, a hard gray backslash across his shirt.

"Just lemme, c'mon Dean, you never let me play with the guns anymore."

Dean snorted against his will. Sam gave him a big encouraging grin, fingers long and bent over the barrel, holding the gun to his heart like some kind of promise.

"Don't fuck it up," Dean warned, and put the beer on the coffee table before crashing down next to Sam. "Kick your ass."

"Yeah yeah." Sam sat up, bent contentedly over his task again. He hummed along with the cheesy swelling strings in the background that meant some hairsprayed mom was about to get wasted, and Dean looked at the back of Sam's neck, the careful angle of it and the clean stretch of skin.

He reached for a beer, pulled off two and passed one to Sam, who set the gun down to take it. "So what'd you do today?"

They cracked their beers in unison--lots of practice.

"Got fuckin' Mikey to pay me back for the transmission I spotted him back in July, you remember that?"

"'Course, Sammy, you brought it up every frickin' night for like a month." Dean held out his can, spitting carbonation, and Sam thocked his against it and the night was officially on.

"Yeah, but a long time ago, right? Haven't in awhile 'cause I basically gave up on him and was planning how to, you know, break his kneecaps like I promised, but then I'm out at the yard today just screwing around with this old Mustang and who should come by?"

Sam tipped his head Dean's direction, lifted his eyebrows and Dean supplied readily, "Fuckin' Mikey."

"Fuckin' Mikey, exactly right. Flush from the timber bonus and he just pulled out this stack, thick as a deck a cards. Man, I 'bout dropped."

Grin like that on Sam's face, Dean lost the thread of the plot for a moment. It was like a curtain thrown aside, Sam's face just opened up, and Dean couldn't help but wonder how buzzed he already was. There were different stages to Sam's drunk and one of them was talkative and charming and Dean had a bad feeling he'd walked right into it.

"So you got it all back?" Dean asked.

Sam nodded, his head loose on his neck. "And I told him no worries about interest, but me and my brother get free lemonade at the cafe for a year."

"Really?"

"Damn right. Lookin' out for you, Dean, you know."

"Good man." Dean reached forward and scrubbed Sam's hair, Sam ducking away like he always did. "You actually made legal money today, Sammy, I don't even know what to say."

Sam made a scorned sound. He was back at work cleaning the Colt and he might have been half in the bag but his hands never faltered. It was second-nature to him as much as it was to Dean, all those Sundays spent at the kitchen table watching Dad dismantle and reconstruct his collection. Dean could strip a rifle quicker than a Marine. Sam could probably do it blindfolded.

"'Thanks' wouldn't be totally out of line," Sam told him. Dean flicked him between the shoulder blades and watched Sam jump. "Or you might wanta quit while you're ahead."

"I'm ahead?" Sam looked back to roll his eyes, and Dean grinned at him. Everything was so depressing these days, and a night like tonight, an easy beer-drinking slasher-film night, it was like finding an arrowhead in mud.

They drank their beers. Sam finished with the guns and arranged them neatly on the table, handguns in a row with the rifle and shotgun above. Every gun Dean owned had once belonged to his father, except for his service revolver and that wasn't really his.

Sam slumped back next to Dean on the couch, one foot up on the coffee table and his leg stretched out impossibly long, bridgelike. He rolled a can of beer on his thigh, left little hooks of wet on his jeans.

People were dying quicker the later it got in the movie. Sam was blinking foggily, messing up when he tried to say the dialogue along with the characters. A cottony haze had settled over Dean's mind, and he thought with relief that his obligations were at an end; they had made it through another day. Sam was okay, warm next to him on the couch and not bleeding in any discernible way.

"So," Dean said, and let it hang there for a moment, pulling his thoughts together. "You were down at the yard?" Sam made an affirmative sound, gnawing absently on the lip of the can. "Gonna let Mattias put you to work again?"

Sam's shoulders hitched in a shrug. "I like this Mustang."

"Is it for somebody or just for fun?"

"Just for fun. I got this, this image of her, what she's gonna look like once I get her fixed. How she'll sound."

"Yeah." Dean folded his arm under his head, remembering when he was maybe eight and he'd pressed himself flat to the side of the Impala as his dad turned her on, his cheek on cool black metal and the whole car coming to shuddering life under his body. "You're gonna grease-monkey anyway, you should get paid."

Huffing out a little breath, Sam tapped the edge of his beer on his teeth, tick-ticking. He wasn't looking at Dean, movie light reflected chaotically on his eyes.

"I don't know," Sam answered after a long moment. "I don't think I wanna go back yet."

"Come on, man," Dean said without thinking, and then bit his tongue. Sam's jaw tensed; he'd heard the exasperation in Dean's voice and he evidently didn't appreciate it.

They'd both grown up in the salvage yard, rolling on their backs on the miniature dollies Bobby'd made for them, painted with grease and getting taller alongside sunbursts of broken glass and the mean slice of daylight off chrome. The rusted hulks and burnt-out shells, Dean was as at home among them as he was among the family photographs. A couple times when he was a kid, Sam had made as if he'd run away without actually going, and Dean found him curled up in trunks with busted latches, each time looking so astonished that Dean had tracked him down.

Dad had had to sell the yard four years ago, when he kept getting too tired to put in a full day and they didn't know he was sick yet. Mattias was a decent guy and kept the place further in the black than John had ever managed, but Dean didn't really feel at home there anymore. It was just a place that was no longer theirs.

Sam came back after John went into the hospital for the first time, and he'd signed on at the salvage yard just because it was still there. He'd worked for Mattias steadily for a few months, coming home black-handed with his hair in stiffened clumps, surgical-neat cuts on his forearms. They needed the money. Dean's insurance didn't come anywhere close to covering all of John's medical expenses; trying to stay afloat, they were drowning in slow-motion.

After their dad was gone, Sam had gone a little crazy and beat the shit out of an old Cadillac with a crowbar, and Mattias got kinda scared of him (everybody was kinda scared of Sam, back then), and started letting him work whenever he wanted. And so Sam had done for two years now, on and off and mostly on when he was living with Jess, mostly off since he'd lost her.

Dean shouldn't be bringing it up, but they were gonna have to eat Kraft mac and cheese until his next paycheck and while Dean loved him some Kraft, he wasn't trying to base his diet around it.

"You ever planning to go back to work for real?" Dean asked, trying to keep it non-confrontational.

"Eventually." Short enough that Dean knew Sam didn't want to talk about it, but that had never stopped him before.

"Just sayin'. It's been what, ten months?"

Sam narrowed his eyes, passing a glare over to his brother. "Ten months, one week, four days. But who's counting?"

Dean smirked at nothing. His stomach was trying to crawl up his throat and he shoved it down. He didn't like this conversation and was frustrated because he'd been the one to start it, all his good intentions gone to hell.

"Just, you know. Think maybe it'd be good for you."

Dean winced as the words left his mouth, already regretting them. Sam's face contorted, the corner of his lip trying to curl into a sneer.

"I don't need you telling me what's good for me, Dean. What, I get a job or you kick me out? Heard that shit before."

"You don't even live here," Dean muttered at his beer. Sam made a strange choked noise, all anger and grief, but Dean didn't look up.

"Fine." Finality in it, Sam slamming his beer on the coffee table and getting to his feet. "I'll just get the fuck out of _your_ house, then."

Dean didn't think, just hooked his foot around Sam's ankle as Sam tried to leave, a hard yank and a startled cry and boom, Sam was on the floor. He seemed unnaturally big, laid out on his stomach with his shoulders up, his head dropped down. He was cursing, calling Dean a sheepfucker and saying his _arm_ was _fuckin' broke_, but he was still here.

Dean hopped on Sam's back before Sam could get his hands under himself, felt the air whoosh out of his brother and Sam kinda groaned. Fisting a hand in Sam's hair, knees wedged under his shoulder blades and legs pinning Sam's arms, Dean said conversationally:

"Not goin' anywhere, Sammy."

"_Asshole_," Sam wanted Dean to know, bucking and wrenching under him. "Lemme up."

"Nope." Thick soft hair at the base of Sam's head, Dean's fingers completely hidden from view, and he had to remember, pressure but not too much, keeping Sam in place. "I asked a perfectly innocent question, like, out of brotherly concern and all and you, you fuckin' flip."

Sam had his head turned to the side, half his face visible gnashing and spitting, single eye rolling to find Dean. "I didn't wanna talk about it."

"I can see that now."

Dean leaned down, letting his forearm fit against the dent of Sam's spine. The inside of his wrist pressed flat to the bare skin at the back of Sam's neck, his pulse hammering. Sam fell quiet, his face impossible to read with only half available to Dean. Sam was chewing on the inside of his lip, Dean could tell, and the thought did unprecedented things to him.

"Just tell me to shut the fuck up," Dean said, proud of his voice for staying even. Sam was mind-numbingly warm, up close like this. "Don't need to pitch a damn fit and storm out, ya little brat."

Sam bared his teeth, a whole-body shiver spurring through him first and then Dean. Dean's head was coming apart, deeply aware of every place he was touching his brother, and he could see that this was going somewhere very bad.

He didn't let up. Couldn't. He felt like he'd been welded to Sam.

Dean was careful exhaling, his chest rising against Sam's back. He tried to remember what he'd been trying to say, feeling feverish and vaguely delirious.

"If, if you don't wanna get a job yet then fine, it's okay. We're not, like, about to go on Alpo diets or something."

Sam made an airless sighing sound, face scrunched. "If you'd let me fuckin' hustle-"

"No." Sam's hair got a twist for that, dangerously satisfying to hear him hiss. "You lose any more teeth and no one's gonna think you're pretty no more."

"Hustling and brawling are not interchangeable, I can just do the one."

"Well, all my past experience tells me different, but if you wanna believe it."

"Dean-" And Sam cut himself off, a sharp intake of air that forced his shoulders up. Dean was staring at the line of Sam's jaw, his concentration totally fixed until Sam said, "Get offa me."

Something in Sam's tone, warning and dark, and Dean was scrambling off him, pieces of Sam's hair clinging to his fingers. He sat on the couch, wired suddenly, drunker than he had ever anticipated. Sam took a minute, elbows on the floor, head bowed, before he pushed himself up.

Dean wondered if he should apologize, but Sam beat him to it.

"Sorry." Sam got to his feet with the care of a habitual drunk used to waking up on the ground. "Sorry about that."

Nodding, saying, "It's okay," those were both reflexes.

"You're probably right, anyway." Sam dug his hands into his pockets, tottering only slightly. The carpet had left a thatched red mark on his cheek. "I just, I don't think I'd be very good at a job right now."

"No, that's true," Dean allowed. "Kind of a fuckin' train wreck, Sam."

"I know." Sam sighed. "I really do know."

_ten months_, Dean thought. Ten months watching his brother get decimated, self-immolating at a hundred miles an hour down the mountain roads, greedy for a sheer drop, and Dean flinched every time the phone rang at the station. Sam was altered in fundamental ways, all his sweetness gone, all his ambition, and it couldn't be normal for grief to do this to a person.

Dean would have done just about anything to have kept this from happening to Sam.

"Look, you'll work when you can," Dean said. "We'll be all right 'til then." He rubbed his knuckles on his kneecap, looking up at his brother as the credits ran in the background. "And you should stay here. I mean. Get rid of your place 'cause you only live there in name and we could buy food with the rent."

Dean's throat closed up, tried to choke off what he was saying and he thought that must be his battered sense of self-preservation, kicking in once again. It was probably not the best idea he'd ever had, asking Sam to move back in, but Sam was better like this. His bruises were almost all the way faded, and Dean hadn't found him passed out in the hallway or bathroom in four days, and he hadn't been rolled from any of the bars in better than a week. Sam was getting better, Dean had to believe.

Sam gave him a narrow-eyed look, suspicious. "You just want me around so you can keep an eye on me."

"That is one hundred percent correct."

Sam's mouth twitched. "The hell do I get out of it?"

"Room and board. Pay attention, Sammy."

And there it was, a smile from Sam, quick as an open-handed slap and stinging in the same way. A white flag passing over Sam's face, and Dean felt something in his chest loosen, a give in the tense set of his shoulders. It had been a while since he'd gotten Sam to smile.

"Well, hell, you asked so nice." Sam tried to play it off, but there was color on his face and he kept looking at his feet like he did when he was pleased and trying not to show it.

"I got no wish for this to be just my house," Dean told him, and he meant it to be joking although in retrospect he couldn't see anything funny about it. It was kind of awkward, a flash of confusion on Sam's face, and Dean coughed, dug for another beer so he wouldn't have to meet Sam's eyes.

"I'll stick around," Sam said, slow like each word had to be planned out. "Long as you want me to."

Dean looked up at him, blinking warily and knocked off balance a bit because he'd thought it blindingly obvious that Sam could stick around forever if he so chose. Sam gave him a small, tired smile, and Dean heard a traitorous old voice start up in his head again, a sinister hiss that only ever had one word to say, an endless plea only when Dean was looking at his brother: _stay_.

(break)


	2. Chapter 2

Sam had been running away his whole life.

When he was a kid, it had been a trick he liked to play. How far could he get, and how many supplies and candy bars he could smuggle in his backpack with its broken zipper and safety pins, and if he had summoned the courage to pick the gun cabinet lock with a paperclip like Dean had taught him and also swiped a weapon. Sam was seven, eight years old. He had gone looking for adventure.

Dean brought him back within an hour, usually. Sam was effortless to track, impossible to conceal. Dean had this sense of him, Sam radar. Most of the time, Sam was just holed up somewhere with a secondhand copy of The Count of Monte Cristo or whatever book he'd gotten the idea from, a damp sleeping bag and a dying flashlight and a stomachache from eating a dozen candy bars for dinner. Twice, Sam had made it as far as the highway. Only once, he'd managed to get a ride.

Sam got almost four hundred miles away that time. He got all the way to Sioux Falls, the length of the state separating Dean from his brother for the two days it took John to track him down. John hadn't wanted Dean's help, said there was nothing he could do; Dean only halfway believed him. He rode shotgun and kept his window down so the wind could batter against his face, no more than the least he deserved for letting Sam get a three-hour head start and not being there to stop Sam from getting into the station wagon they were following.

In Sioux Falls, the trail ran cold and John called Bobby from the lit telephone box at a gas station, learned that Bobby had tracked down the partial license plate they'd been working off. He directed them to a quiet street where the station wagon, incongruously painted a pale lavender shade, was parked in front of a squat little house with white shudders and a tricycle on its side on the lawn. It was late, and this was the second night Dean had gone without setting eyes on his brother. He remembered feeling so tired already, like life without Sam took ten times as long and weighed more than he could physically bear.

John wanted to kick in the door, guns blazing and all, but Dean talked him down. He wasn't sure John had fully grasped that Sam had not been kidnapped, he'd run the fuck away. John had been driven by terror and rage and that old favorite vengeance ever since he'd heard that someone had actually _picked up_ his eight year old son from the side of the road and then _drove the hell off_. It was a killing kind of offense.

But Dean did what he did and got his dad calmed and convinced him to give diplomacy a shot. Dean went up to the house alone, a switchblade in his back pocket just in case, and knocked while smoothing down his hair in a last-ditch effort at respectability.

The woman who opened the door was in her forties, brassy blonde with dark roots and gray coming in at the temples, and she looked exhausted. Her three little daughters crowded behind her in matching nightgowns, huge eyes studying the new boy at the door until their mom shooed them away in a flurry of golden hair and lace edges. The mom didn't seem surprised to see Dean at all, which seemed very weird.

"He's yours?" she asked.

Dean nodded, mouth gone dry. "Brother." He tried out a smile. "Like him back, if you wouldn't mind."

"Sure, saves me that trip to Child Services tomorrow."

She reached behind the door, and pulled Sam out. Best magic trick Dean had ever seen, the first to stop his heart dead. Sam had a huge grin on his face, one front tooth missing that had been loose before Sam had disappeared, and he had rainbow-colored barrettes all over his head, rattling as he moved.

"You found me!" Sam said, completely thrilled with the idea, and he grabbed Dean's shirt and tugged it. Dean locked his hands on Sam's thin shoulders, staring at the joy on his brother's face, almost sick with relief that this was all just a _game_ to Sam.

He couldn't even bring himself to lay into him, knowing their dad would be all over it. Sam deserved a hiding or worse but Dean wasn't interested in that right now. Sam's shoulders felt fragile in his hands, his bones hollow like a bird's, and he hadn't stopped grinning at Dean, poking his tongue into the new gap in his teeth.

There was something wrong with Dean. He wanted to say _stupid fuckin' kid_, and he wanted to put Sam in a headlock and noogie some sense into him, but he couldn't do anything that would mess with that grin on Sam's face. He couldn't even say _never do that again_, low and urgent, because then Sam would realize how big he'd fucked up and he'd get all quiet and sad and Dean never knew what to do with himself when Sam was like that.

He unsnapped the barrettes from Sam's hair one by one, and gave the handful back to the woman and then Dean took his brother back. Handed him over to their dad and sat silently in the shotgun seat while John ripped into Sam, residual fear and anger making his voice tremble. Dean only looked back once, got an eyeful of Sam's face all red and screwed up, tears streaming and his mouth wrenched tight. Dean had counted mile markers the rest of the way home.

That was the last time Sam had run away just for fun.

He'd gotten out for real a decade after that. Six years ago.

It had been a bad summer. Sam had just graduated high school and he was moody as shit and prone to destructive urges, no bottle in his hand safe from being flung into the wall. He kept stealing the keys to the Impala, vanishing into the night while Dean slept, and the car came back dusty and smelling like liquor and sex and every time Dean threatened Sam's life and every time he let Sam go on breathing.

Dean was sweating his job, pulling fourteen-hour shifts and still taking a lot of shit for being the sheriff's pet, even though Bobby'd been harder on Dean than a Texas judge since he joined the force. The days melted together, smeary and hot and full of bloodflushed faces, bloodshot eyes, and Dean suffered through like swimming in tar, came home to Sam bitching and sniping and slamming pans around. John passed out drunk on the couch a minute earlier every night.

He and Sam got into a fight in July. Dean had never been able to remember what it was about, exactly, but he assumed it had something to do with the car. Lots of stuff seemed to revolve around the car.

They'd been in the parking lot at the station, the Impala gleaming and impassive. Started just arguing, Dean out there on his fifteen minute and Sam still wearing the wifebeater he slept in last night, and it escalated. Nobody was even drunk, and it was heatstroke hot but that wasn't any kind of excuse. Sam had thrown the first punch, the lone consolation and the one part Dean remembered with crystalline clarity.

It got pretty rough. Sam wound up with a couple cracked ribs, which explained Dean's dislocated knuckle and sprained wrist. Sam, evil little fucker, concentrated much of his attention on Dean's face, blacking both eyes, whipping his elbow into Dean's mouth like he wanted to eradicate it from the earth. Dean could still pick out the flaws in Sam's fighting style, too loose and wild, though it'd been years since they'd sparred and this wasn't anything like sparring. They kept winding up in spaceless clinches, arms thrown tight around each other before they got breath enough to hit again.

Bobby and a couple other officers pried them apart, eventually. Dean had watched how Sam's arms were slick with sweat and how he almost escaped hold, lunging at Dean, snarling like something that belonged on a chain. Dean was panting, sagging in Bobby's grip, his whole body suddenly bright with pain.

Bobby had put them both in the same cell, called in Doc Masters to confirm that they weren't too badly hurt, and then left them locked up for the night.

It was creative parenting, he told Dean later. He'd cleared it with John first.

They hadn't spoken for a few hours and Dean hadn't been looking either, blindfolded by a pair of blue icepacks over his swelling eyes. Sam was breathing shallowly, lying flat on the bunk above him, dim from the painkillers he'd been given for his ribs.

"Dean," Sam had said. "It's no good fighting with you."

Dean got his meaning; Sam honestly enjoyed fights, got something out of it that other men got from sports and sex and church. He'd always scrapped with his friends, dirt yard affairs conducted with savagery but a startling lack of malice, and since he'd gotten too old for that he'd turned to all the enemies the world could present him. It was disconcerting for Dean to find himself among their number.

"Then don't, Sam. Real simple." Dean's whole face was numb, black holes under the ice packs. There was a bone-deep ache in his bandaged wrist, beating along with his pulse.

"Did you let me win?"

"Hey. You did not win."

"Yeah." Sam made a clicking sound that Dean couldn't recognize. The mattress whined above Dean's head, Sam shifting around and Dean felt his heartrate pick up and he wasn't sure why. "Let's, um. Let's not do this again."

"'kay. Don't hit me again."

"You can't hit me either."

"I wouldn't, Sammy, I. I didn't even want to before."

A moment of silence followed, belied only by Sam's tortured breathing, and Dean cursed himself a little bit. His mouth hurt whenever he moved it, the bleeding only just stopped.

Then Sam said, "I'm taking off next month," same as he would say, "We're out of orange juice," like some kind of idle problem for Dean to solve.

"Where?" Dean asked. "You can't take my car."

Sam laughed but it sounded really painful, and Dean had to listen to him wheezing and groaning. Dean felt shittier by the minute, the aches in his wrist and head radiating out in waves.

"Kansas City," Sam said. "And I don't want your car, I got my own car."

"What." Dean sat up, groaned. "The fuck are you talking about?"

"Getting out, Dean. Done with this place."

Dean remembered thinking of jumping into the lake in November, the glassy shatter of water so cold it felt knife-sharp, and the way it was like his heart had frozen instantaneously. Like everything in him had just ceased to be.

Sam was breathing so ragged, scraping up and down Dean's spine, and his head was spinning but he didn't know if he could blame that on this moment. Awful sinking feeling happening inside, like falling off a cliff and reaching for something, anything, and coming up with loose dirt and empty air.

"I thought you were over this," Dean had managed, thinking of all the times he'd gone to check on Sam when Sam was small and found him missing. "Too old for this shit."

"Actually," Sam told him, maddeningly easy except that every breath had to be killing him. "I am finally old enough for this shit."

Dean hadn't wanted to listen to it. He knew Sam's reasons, he'd heard them all before. There was nothing to do in Kingston. Sam didn't want to spend the rest of his life in the salvage yard. Their dad would never understand what the fuck Sam was all about. Dean had the police force but Sam didn't have anything.

Dean kept telling him to shut up, but Sam laid it all out anyway. He convinced Dean that it was true.

They spent the rest of their night in jail not sleeping, not talking except a couple times an hour when Sam would ask, "Dean?" and Dean would answer, "Yeah," staring up at Sam's bunk and wondering what was going to happen next.

Sam was as good as his word. He packed up the truck he'd put back together while Dean wasn't paying attention, and made the rounds saying goodbye for a week, and by September he was gone. Dean had thought he'd prepared himself, but the blow still felt like a sucker punch.

Sam lived on the Kansas side of the river, got work at a garage in Missouri, and sent Dean postcards from time to time. There were always black fingerprints in the margins, proof that Sam had once held this in his hands.

Dean got on with his life. He had no other realistic option.

He had his job and his car and his friends, a town full of well-meaning older people just dying to mother him, and it was probably more than he deserved. Dean could smile no matter how lousy he felt, a very old skill, and he tried to be content with what he'd been left.

Sam drunk-dialed him on occasion, usually lit beyond coherence and just mumbling pieces and fragments of words and saying Dean's name a lot. Once, just once that Dean remembered, Sam had tried to explain himself.

"Not like it's not still home," Sam told him.

Dean was in bed, the phone pulled under the covers with him. He liked it dark as possible whenever Sam called him.

"It's late, Sam."

That was just by rote, and Sam didn't pause to acknowledge it. "Not like I'm not, that I don't _like_ the place. 's home, Dean, you know? Love it there."

"Obviously." Dean's eyes were closed, hand laid flat across his face. Talking to Sam always gave him a headache.

"Don', don't you take that tone with me," Sam said, and then started giggling, an uneven hitching sound. "You gotta listen to me, Dean."

"Always, Sam."

"Good, 'cause it ain't, ain't anything to do with you. Important for you to know that."

Sam breathed for a minute, giving Dean a chance to respond but he was in no condition. His ribs felt crushed, throat caved in.

"I just couldn't stay, man, on accounta there's all this other stuff. Whole rest of the fuckin' world, you know? More than one little town. One little family. An' I, I, I don't know, I think some people can stick and some can't and it's nobody's fault."

Dean stayed quiet for a long time, until Sam had asked, hesitant, "Dean?" and Dean had said, "Yeah," before he'd had time to think. Then he said, "Sleep it off, Sammy," and when Sam refused, Dean had hung up on him.

It went on like that for four years. Postcards and drunk-dials, Sam taking classes at a community college and meeting people Dean would never know and living by the river in a city Dean had never seen, all of it left up to his imagination. Dean missed him every day, this hard petulant ache in his gut that never went all the way away. It took him awhile, but he had finally made an unstable peace with the fact that this was his life now.

Then their dad got sick.

And Sam came back.

(break)

On Friday, Dean pelted Sam with a shoe at five o'clock in the morning. Sam woke up foul-mouthed and surly, so, pretty much like normal.

They had Froot Loops and coffee in the murky pre-dawn, and Dean made some sandwiches, wrapped up in wax paper like soft bricks. Sam was monosyllabic, cracking his jaw on yawns, his eyes darting warily. Dean wasn't much better, edgy and feeling bruised.

They were on the road before the sun cleared the low-lying hills to the east, flattened and capped like an egg yolk. It was usually about eleven hours to Lawrence, but Sam was driving (he almost never let Dean drive the Impala anymore, one of his crueler swings of mood) and he didn't care what Bobby had said to Dean about the speed limit. They flew, steel-winged through the badlands where it was too cold to even snow, and into the plains and the fallow cornfields, everything white and gray and motionless, and they made it by early afternoon.

Dean, as uncomfortable as always in the shotgun seat, let his head rest on the window, studying the town where they were supposed to have grown up. Streets cleared and driveways shoveled, so each lawn was delineated, white napkins of snow laid out geometrically and protected by picket fences, roving patchwork dogs lashed to the porch and dancing at the ends of their chains. Kids were playing football in a vacant lot, tires in the endzone, the ball wearing electrician's tape instead of stitches. College kids huddled in coffee shops with textbooks and sheafs of riffling white paper, sporting strange trends in facial hair

A nice little town, but Kingston made Lawrence look like Vegas and New York City and Tokyo rolled into one. Dean could spend weeks just checking out the girls, having long since memorized every curve back home.

They got food at a diner that Dean thought he might remember; something about blueberry pancakes with candles in them, and milk in a coffee mug because he wanted to be grown up too. There were miniature jukeboxes at every table and Sam wanted to put on Stevie Wonder but Dean wanted candy from the crank-machines up front and the argument over proper dispensation of their change took them through most of the meal.

It was good, trivial and stupid and far removed from their purpose here. Sam made a magic growing worm out of his straw wrapper. He had an unlabeled glass flask in his inside coat pocket, glinting amber as Sam dosed his milkshake so Dean could watch the flush rise on his cheeks, the slow spread of Sam's genuine smile.

It was actively snowing when they left the diner. Bits of it stuck to Sam's hair and eyelashes, froze Dean's ears red and nerveless. Dean got to drive because Sam was a little drunk now and Dean was the one who knew the way to the cemetery.

They parked directly across from the wrought-iron gates, and Dean stared through the fluttering snow at the soaked grass, smooth shaped pieces of stone and marble. He held his hand out to Sam.

"Gimme some of that."

Sam passed him the flask without a word. Dean took a pull that tasted like acid and he hissed, blinking back tears, took another before he could think better of it. It didn't do much for his courage, but at least his hands stopped shaking.

Sam snorted quietly beside him. Dean gave him a sidelong look, vision still blurred. "What in the name of Christ could you be finding funny right now?"

Shaking his head, Sam pressed his fingers into the dashboard, a bitter smirk on his face.

"Two brothers sharing a drink before going to visit the grave of their father, who died of liver disease."

The liquor tried to come back up, Dean's stomach retching. He shoved his wrist against his mouth.

"Jesus, Sam. Was this not morbid enough already?" Spoken against his arm, it came out muffled, but Sam understood, shrugging unrepentantly.

"You're the one who wanted to come. Deal with it."

"Fuckin' hate your scrawny ass, god," Dean said. He felt less like hurling now. Warmer all through his stomach and chest, better able to face the weather and his brother and his father.

"Yeah, Dean, you been saying that for years."

Sam leaned over, took the flask out of Dean's hands and then grabbed his shoulder, gave it a shake. Dean shot him an uncertain look, feeling jarred through his whole body. Sam's eyes were big and his hair was damp from the snow, slicked back so his forehead showed clear. There was a weird angle to his eyebrows, kinda scared but not all the way. His hand was real heavy all of a sudden, gripping Dean's shoulder.

Dean thought for a second that Sam was gonna do. Something. He couldn't imagine what, but every muscle he had braced for it.

But Sam only tugged on his arm and told him, "Let's go, sooner we go sooner we can git," and then he was sliding away, opening his door to the swirling white.

Dean exhaled, watched his breath disintegrate when it hit the air.

Sam was already halfway up the hill, boot prints in the carpet of snow, and Dean followed him, surprised Sam remembered where the grave was. He'd been really drunk the other two times they'd been here.

But Sam went right to it without a wrong turn, and he was standing at the foot of his father's grave when Dean caught up with him. Hands buried in his coat pockets, collar flipped up and hiding his mouth, Sam was reading the sparse notations on the military headstone, or anyway staring at it, his dark eyes tracking.

Dean stood at Sam's shoulder. He noticed the way the snow was indistinguishable on the white stone, silver winter weed growing at the base, and he thought, _well, okay, dad, here we are._

It was dumb; the same thing he'd thought last year, in fact, and dumber now than it was then. Like they came to Lawrence at John's orders, stood at his grave on the anniversary of his death waiting for him to arise and tell them why they'd come.

Sam coughed, breaking the stillness. "It's not really working for me, man. Don't know what the fuck it's supposed to _do_, but it's failing."

_irritating little_ bitch, Dean thought viciously, and he gave Sam the coldest glare he could muster. Sam scoffed, turned his head and spat. He walked away down the row of graves, his boots crunching on the snow. Sam got far enough away that he became a black outline against the pale day.

Dean stared down at the grave. There really wasn't anything remarkable about it at all.

"Well," he said, keeping his voice low and feeling like a jerk. "Guess it's been two years now. I, uh. I still don't really know what to say."

Dean cleared his throat, searching for Sam and finding him down a slope, peering up at a huge granite angel whose up-turned hands were filling with snow. Sam looked small, dwarfed by the angel's wings.

"I don't know if you've been watching," he said to his father. "But things haven't. They haven't gone too well. You remember Jessica? Sam's Jess? She-"

Something stopped him. The palpable nature of words when it was this cold, tangible guilt like scar tissue, and Dean didn't think he had the right to talk about Jessica.

"Each year gets harder," he said instead. "And I don't, I'm not sure how it gets worse than right now, but I got some ideas and we, we can't do this much longer."

He stopped again, pressing his frozen knuckles against his eye and breathing out. Dean didn't know if he was drunk or just fucked-up, figured he was probably at least a little of both. He wanted to see his dad so badly, wishing with all his heart that ghosts were real.

"So. That's what's going on." Dean scuffed his boots in the snow, watched Sam's outline take a long hit off the flask. "You're lucky you're not here to see it."

John didn't answer. He probably wouldn't have even if he were still alive.

Dean loitered at his father's grave for a little longer. Last year he'd had to drag Sam out here stumbling drunk and slurring blasphemy, and Sam had shoved him, said, "What the fuck are you _waiting for_?" He'd been right; Dean had come to Lawrence expecting something, some kind of redemption waiting for him in Kansas. It was irrational and futile and Dean hated that, hated that Sam had seen it so clearly.

Sam had said, "Just one more chance for him to let you down," and Dean, terrified that if he started hitting Sam he would not be able to stop, had dropped to his knees, punching the icy ground until his knuckles were smeared with blood.

He thought he'd learned better after that, but here he was again, reading his father's name off the stone and feeling a sorrowful disappointment core its way through him.

"Dean!"

Dean jumped half out of his skin. He whipped his head up, no thought in his mind but _Sam_ and _trouble_. He was two steps towards Sam's voice, hands yanked out of his pockets in fists tight enough to draw blood on his palms, when he saw that Sam was waving, Sam was just calling him over.

He put a fist against his heart, breathed out. Muttering, "Fuckin' hell, Sam," he made his way to where his brother was.

"What's the matter with you?" Dean smacked him hard; Sam didn't duck or retaliate, just winced. "It's a graveyard, Sam, do not yell in the fuckin' graveyard."

Sam shrugged, devoid of remorse. "You were way over there."

Dean went to smack him again but Sam caught his wrist, the bone of Dean's arm thwacking into the palm of Sam's hand, and held him.

"Look what I found."

Distracted by Sam's grip and the fucking endless snow slowly covering them both, Dean glanced at the family plot Sam had indicated and grunted, not knowing why the hell he should care, and then he read _Campbell_ carved in every stone but one and he froze.

"Did you know she was here?" Sam asked, sounding sincerely curious.

"I." Dean shook his head, staring at the simple pink marble headstone like it had sprung fully-formed from the earth. "Don't think I did."

"You don't remember?"

"I was four, I, I had other things to worry about."

Dean took a step forward, and Sam let his arm go. Dean wanted to touch the stone, press his fingers to the carved name and learn it by feel. He held back, hyperaware of his brother behind him.

"Grandparents," Sam said, his voice kinda rough but mostly even. "Samuel and Deanna." He paused. "That's gonna be funny later."

Dean made a complicated sound, strangled cough like regret and loneliness, fighting a borderless ache that he remembered from when he was little.

"They died before Mom and Dad got married," Sam noted. "Same day, look. What d'ya think happened?"

Not answering, really kinda wishing Sam would keep his goddamn mouth shut, Dean took another half-step towards his mother's grave. He shook the snow out of his hair, knocked his shoulders clean, and tiny crystals of ice slid under his collars and went down his backbone, making him jerk and tremble.

"Broken heart, is my guess." Sam sounded old, jaded. "One followed the other just 'cause life wasn't worth it anymore."

"Jesus Christ, Sam, shut _up_."

Sam did, lapsing into a silence that felt sullen at Dean's back. Dean didn't really want to think about how his grandparents had died; they'd each only been at the edge of fifty and Dean knew what kind of story probably explained it.

Dean stared at the family plot for a little while longer, searing _Mary Winchester_ into his mind and realizing belatedly that he'd let her go, he'd forced her out of his thoughts a quarter century ago and now here he was, stuck trying to remember what it had felt like to have a mom.

He didn't have a whole lot of luck. When he turned back to Sam, his brother was hunched up in his coat, wreathed in snow and shivering hard. Black and white world, the snow and Sam's soaked hair and his pale face, his eyes big and effortlessly dark. Sam was watching him, waiting for Dean's next move.

Dean brushed the snow off Sam's shoulders, then put his hands on Sam's chest for just a second, under his coat where Sam was only wearing a plain white undershirt because they'd been in the car all day and Sam had never really minded the cold, anyway. Dean pressed his palms flat, like a shove but no force behind it, and Sam's heart thudded once incredibly hard against his fingers and then Dean took his hands away.

"Come on," he said, hearing the torn note in his voice and taking it for the shock. He'd only come prepared to see one parent's tombstone today.

He brushed past Sam and followed his own footprints back. Sam loped up alongside and they walked shoulder to shoulder back to the car. Dean still had the keys and he got behind the wheel without asking. He expected some static from Sam but he just slid into shotgun without a word. They sat there for a minute, watching the storm build.

"Neither of you ever talked about this place," Sam said. "Or her."

Dean eyed him, weary and on his guard. "It's kind of a sore subject."

"Do you remember anything?"

"No. Not really." _Pale gold_, Dean couldn't help but think. _Blowing soap bubbles in the bath. Being carried around with the clothes in the laundry basket. Getting kissed on each eyelid_.

"C'mon, man, anything?"

Sam was turned to face him, arm up along the seat and a look on his face kinda like desperation. Dean held the bottom of the wheel, trying not to make eye contact.

"She called me her Dean," Dean said, surprising himself a little. "'How's my Dean.' I. I remember that."

Sam let a moment pass, then sat back. "My Dean," he repeated, shaping the words and seeing how they tasted.

Dean glanced at him. Snow was melting in Sam's hair. There were spots of windburned color high on his cheeks, and he was chewing on his lip, and Dean felt something close like a fist in his stomach. He jerked his eyes forward, swallowing and wondering what the fuck was wrong with him _now_.

"All right," Sam said. "Can we leave the most depressing place in the wide world now?"

For once, Dean had no argument.

(break)

There was no chance Dean was letting either of them risk the drive back to Kingston overnight and in the middle of a snowstorm, and so they hid out in a bar until nightfall, then got a motel room with two beds.

They were both drunk by then.

Dean hadn't bothered fighting it. Sam's flask had run dry shortly after leaving the cemetery, and he'd sniffed out the nearest bar in the manner of an addict finding dealers in city parks. Dean had gone where Sam wanted, feeling wrung out and turned around and awkward in this town that was not his own. Sam had said, drink this, and Dean had lifted his hand obediently.

It had been a stressful day.

Dean didn't remember a whole lot that they'd talked about in the bar, old _Tales from the Crypt_ episodes and something about Jack Nicholson, but it had nothing to do with all the dead people they knew and he counted that victory enough. He'd had enough feeling like an orphan to last the rest of his goddamn life, and it'd only been two years, which was of course the tragedy of the whole thing.

But Sam told filthy jokes and beat Dean at pool a bunch of times and shark-grinned over green felt, slouched against the wall with his hips cocked out, cue stick cradled in the pocket formed by his woven fingers, a constant dare on his lips. He made Dean dizzy, got him so drunk.

Sam drove them back to the motel, because "if we're both drunk, then I have more experience," and that made a certain amount of convoluted sense to Dean in the state that he was in. He fell asleep against the door anyway, hypnotized by streetlights, and got woken up by Sam's giant hands curving over his shoulders, tugging him up and out.

"Hey Sammy," Dean mumbled, stumbling and leaning into him, latched onto Sam's forearms. "Whoa."

"C'mon, cowboy, on your feet." Sam hooked an arm around Dean's shoulders, hugging him for a second as Sam reached over to swing the car door shut. Dean had his face against Sam's neck, tucked warm and rough, and he snuffed, finding it disconcerting to be this close to his brother, to pick out the scent of the shampoo they shared and the gin and beers and jalapeno poppers he'd had at the bar and the good underneath Sam smell of sweat and dust.

Sam pushed him an arm's length away, spun him and steered Dean to the motel room. Dean normally wouldn't tolerate this kind of behavior from his kid brother, but Sam was much much better at being drunk. Dean felt only distantly related to his extremities, mistrusting his feet and hands, but Sam was snickering and that was good to hear.

"Not snowing anymore," Dean observed. He pointed at the sky so Sam would know where to look.

"Nothin' gets by you, huh, copper?"

Dean frowned, slumping against Sam's shoulder as Sam got the door open. All things being equal he'd prefer Sam call him cowboy.

"Don't be a smartass," he told his brother, but it was hard to make out because his mouth was somehow jammed against Sam's coat. Dean lifted his head, spat out some lint. They were in the room now, seemingly by magic.

Sam deposited him on the closest bed, and Dean's stomach pitched and rolled at the movement and so he lay down, hands laid flat above his belt.

"Hoo," Sam said, grinning sardonically and stretching his drawl as he did when he was lit. "Sorry fuckin' sight, you are. Call yourself a Winchester."

"Who taught you how to drink, bitch? Who bought you your first beer?" Dean challenged without moving. He was gazing at the ceiling, the fire sprinkler a stationary point for him to focus on to stop the room rocking.

"Student's become the master, Dean. I seen ya, I doubled you all night."

"Was it a race?" Dean asked with a smirk.

"Ain't everything?"

"Ooh," Dean said sarcastically. "Fuckin' deep, Sammy."

"Aw." There were two hollow thumps as Sam got rid of his boots. "Don't be jealous, man."

"Ha. That's funny, you're a real funny guy."

In his peripheral vision, Dean could see the blur of Sam moving around, stripping off his coat and peeling off his wet jeans to hang them up in the bathroom. He came back in his shorts and undershirt, came hovering over Dean and Dean blinked up at him. Sam's face was softened by the drunk, his eyes half-lidded and shadowy.

"You sleepin' in your boots?"

Dean stared at the wreck of Sam's hair, curled damp in some places and dried unevenly, falling in his eyes again and Dean itched to push it back but there was something wrong with that thought.

"Maybe I like sleepin' in my boots," he mumbled. Sam rolled his eyes.

"Maybe I just leave you like this, then, huh?"

And Sam made as if to go and Dean misinterpreted it, missed the joke and read it as Sam _leaving_, and he shoved up, shot his hand out and grabbed hold of Sam's wrist.

"Don't."

Sam looked down at Dean's hand wrapped around his wrist, then up at his brother. His eyebrows were pinched together, his mouth contorting silently. Wary, like Dean was playing some trick, but it wasn't like that.

"What're." Sam stopped himself. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and Dean was staring for some reason. "I was just messin' around."

He twisted his arm, testing Dean's grip, and Dean held on. There was a pulse in his thumb and a pulse in Sam's wrist and Dean couldn't tell one from the other. Sam's long fingers closed around Dean's forearm, locked them together tight. Heat flared all through Dean, staggering him.

"Sam," Dean said, hearing his voice crack hatefully. "So fucked up right now."

Sam nodded slow, licking his lips absently and Dean's grip tightened and a millisecond later he felt the answering flex of Sam's fingers. Sam was staring at him with his pupils blown, a flush rising on his neck, and Dean thought nonsensically, _this is what my brother looks like_. Whosever heartbeat he held in his hand, it was going terrifyingly fast.

"I gotcha, Dean," Sam said in a whisper, and then he was kneeling on the bed, pressing Dean back down with the flat of his hand, and Dean went because he'd been taking direction from Sam all night and he didn't know what the fuck else to do anyway.

Sam's hand, solid through the fabric, slid down and tripped up against his belt buckle. Dean sucked in a painful gasp, drawing his stomach away but Sam was pushing up his shirts to get at bare skin and when he found it he dragged the callused edges of his fingers across the flickering muscles of Dean's stomach.

"'s okay," Sam murmured, scratching around Dean's belly button and making him groan through his teeth. "Know what I'm doing. 'm like this all the time."

Dean shuddered, shocked speechless by the feel of his little brother's hands on him and how much he was getting off on it, and then Sam was pulling his jeans open and pushing a hand in and Dean arched almost off the bed. Regained his voice on a ground-out plea that sounded a lot like his brother's name. Dean was chilled from his damp jeans but Sam's hand was so warm, big and rough and insanely good, working him hard.

Not okay, Dean knew, recognized the man above him even if he didn't know that intent hungry look on Sam's face. Little brother, impossible to mistake or forget, and it wasn't okay for Dean to be letting him to this, for Dean to be writhing and biting his lip bloody to keep from begging. His little brother Sam with his hand buried in Dean's shorts, jerking him off fast and messy and raw, and Dean grabbed for Sam's wrist again, felt Sam's hand still and Dean thought that he would pull him off, end this right now before it was too late, but instead he pressed down because he couldn't say _harder_ like he wanted to.

Sam got it. His mouth was open, panting slightly, his eyes glazed, and he got it perfect, half-merciless just the way Dean liked. Sam stared at Dean the whole time.

After, Dean's mind was efficiently blown and he lay gasping at air, vaguely aware that Sam was finishing himself off with his free hand spread out on Dean's stomach, smearing in the slick. Dean wished distantly that he could see that, but his eyes were glued shut and the black-out was sinking into him, smothering and dragging him down.

His last thought was for the car, hoping that it would be all right, all alone out there in this strange town.

(break)


	3. Chapter 3

Dean woke up in a great deal of pain.

There was a hatchet buried in his skull, his skin several sizes too small and sore all over. Even without opening his eyes, he could tell sunlight was going to be a problem for him today. He was on top of the covers and his jeans were stiff and the fly was undone and Dean was still wearing his boots.

He lay there for a few minutes, recuperating. There was this terrible taste in his mouth and he kept thinking it was grave dirt even though that made no sense.

The previous day filtered back to him. He was in an unfamiliar room, unfamiliar bed, because he'd come to Kansas with his brother. Yesterday he had stood in the cemetery where both his parents were buried.

Yesterday he'd gotten drunk.

Dean let his eyes open, slow and sticky. The white expanse of the ceiling was somewhat reassuring. Lifting onto one elbow, Dean took a careful look around. The other bed had been slept in, covers tossed recklessly, and there was a glass of water and four aspirin on the night table.

Dean sat up all the way, cradling his head in one hand. He took the pills and finished the water, fixed his pants without wondering how he'd gotten like that. Whole swaths of the night were gone from his mind.

Lying back down, Dean kept a hand flat on his forehead, trying to hold in the throb. He felt sick to his stomach but it wasn't nausea, more like guilt and Dean couldn't think of why.

Sam wasn't gone for long. Dean was dozing, drifting, when the doorknob rattled as a warning before his brother came in. Sam had coffee and a white pastry bag and he was chewing on a coffee straw and he had put his hand on Dean's dick last night.

Dean jerked half-up, his headache exploding. He remembered all at once, Sam pressing him down on the bed, sliding his hands under Dean's shirts, into his shorts. Sam staring at him as Dean broke down, his eyes so bright and hot and dark, and Sam moaning from the back of his throat, bringing himself off with one hand flat on Dean's body.

"Sammy," Dean croaked.

Sam came over between the beds, set one of the coffees on the table. "Got you your old-fashioned."

He sat down on his bed, rummaging in the pastry bag. Dean couldn't stop staring at him, trying to remember what the _fuck_ he'd been thinking, letting Sam do that. Sam pulled out Dean's donut and took a chomp before passing it over, grinned at Dean with his teeth dirty from chocolate.

Dean took the donut numbly, sat all the way up. He planted his feet on the floor and it helped a little, made him feel more secure, better positioned if he needed to fight or run. Sam was eating his glazed, flakes of frosted sugar dusting his knees. His face was outwardly placid, but his eyes were sharp and alert, fixed on Dean, and Dean knew that Sam remembered too.

He ate his donut. He needed some time to think.

His mind wasn't interested in anything measured or reasonable, though, off-balance from the hangover and jammed with memory. Sam just planting that hand on his chest, laying him down, and how Dean's skin had been cool and damp until Sam touched him, and the wild focus in Sam's eyes, his open mouth.

Dean shook his head, harsh and spurring pain, and he flattened his hand against his temple, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Dean?"

"Yeah."

"Y'alright?"

Dean bit his lip. "Yeah." He forced himself to look at Sam, found Sam looking back all guarded and watchful. There was a stubborn blush on Sam's face, almost funny to see with how hardass he acted all the time, but Dean was just wondering how far down it went.

"So," Dean said, cutting his eyes down. "Guess you were pretty drunk last night."

A long weightless moment passed. Dean kept his head bowed, ignoring the wrenching feeling in his stomach and the almost unbearable urge to lift his gaze and see Sam's face. The carpet was once-green, nubby and faded, and Sam breathed a little louder, popped his knuckles against his knee.

"Guess we both were," Sam said finally, his voice sounding dull.

Dean nodded. He had one hand slid under his leg and he dug his fingers into the meat of his thigh, hidden from Sam's view. The wrench in his stomach was opening up, widening, forming a pit.

"Sam, I don't-" and Dean didn't know where he was going with that, so it was probably a good thing that Sam cut him off.

"It's okay, Dean." Clear and a little hoarse, regular no-big-deal voice. "Crazy shit happens, you know?"

Dean glanced up then, couldn't help it. Sam was watching him, his mouth small and tight and his eyebrows forced up so he could seem casual. Sam gave him a smile that was way too easy. He'd gone out with shower-wet hair and now there was frost silvered in and melting onto his neck and Dean thought suddenly like getting felled by God's grace: _jesus christ i want him_.

He made a smile, roiling on the inside. "Yeah," he said, and Sam smiled back, plainly fake and still fucking beautiful, and Dean made some excuse to get the hell out of there, hunching over the bathroom sink with his forehead on the mirror and his whole goddamn life unraveling around him.

He stayed in the bathroom as long as he could, until Sam was banging on the door and hollering about the drive. Dean pulled himself together as well as he could and slicked down his hair, went out to face the day.

The Impala was dressed in snow and they cleaned her off, sweeping arms across the frozen black metal. Dean thought about the ten hours of highways ahead of them with nothing but Sam for distraction, and asked his brother if he could drive.

"No," Sam said immediately.

"Even for just part of it?" Dean wheedled.

"Nope."

"C'mon, Sam, don't be a dick." Dean pressed his hands to the side of the car, sensation leeched out by the cold. "I thought it was implied when I gave her to you that you'd still let me drive her more'n once a year."

"You drive her when I'm drunk," Sam pointed out. "Hardly rare."

"Yeah, but usually I'm ticked at you, so I don't get to enjoy it."

"Nobody asks you to get ticked at me. Get in the goddamn car."

An unaccustomed sharpness in Sam's voice, normally Dean had to work harder to get him riled like that. Dean glared at his brother, hating the tight heat in his gut that wouldn't go away, and got in the shotgun side.

They drove in silence for the first half hour or so, tension rife between them, and then Dean's stomach, not remotely appeased by a single donut, announced itself with a rumble loud enough that Sam snorted.

"Little hungry there, Dean?"

Dean wove his fingers over his stomach, looking out the window. "I could eat."

"Yeah, all right." Sam tapped his thumb on the steering wheel, speculative look on his face. "I know a place."

"What are you talkin' about, you know a place," and then Dean realized where they were, just past Kansas City limits. "Oh." He fell quiet, disturbed by the thought that Sam knew a lot that Dean didn't.

They'd skirted the place coming down, and Sam hadn't said anything so Dean hadn't really even noticed, his thoughts fixed on Lawrence. But Sam took them off the highway and through a dingy warehouse district before emerging in a residential area, mostly housing projects and ranch houses rotting on their foundations.

"My old neighborhood," Sam said without intonation.

Dean studied the place, sidewalks grimed and salted and carrying random bursts of graffiti, trying to picture Sam here but not having much luck. He wanted to ask Sam which house had been his, but he didn't know why that seemed important, and so he kept his mouth shut.

He was having a hard time with this whole thing. It was like walking drunk through a dark room, no idea where to put his feet, no clue how to look at Sam now.

Sam pulled in to a barbecue joint just opening up for lunch. It smelled unbelievable, sweet and tang and char, ramshackle place about the size and shape of a boxcar, the big oil-drum grills in the back belching black smoke into the gray sky. Dean forgot for a second that he kinda wanted to fuck his brother, instead focusing on how he was gonna eat a whole pan of cornbread, then some ribs.

They were at their table with its red-white checkered tablecloth, and Dean was concentrating on the food and trying not to notice how Sam kept _looking_ at him, when a barrel-chested black man in a grease-stained white apron came up and grabbed Sam's shoulder.

Sam jerked, and Dean kinda did too, dropping the bone he'd been gnawing on. But Sam got a look at the guy and his face split in a startled smile, and Dean relaxed minutely.

"Jesse friggin' January, I'll be goddamned."

"Sam my man!"

Sam got to his feet so Jesse could crush him in a bear hug, lifting Dean's brother clear off his feet for a second before slamming back down. Dean smirked behind his hand, liking this guy already.

Sam was laughing, shaking his head and punching Jesse's shoulder. "Still makin' trouble, huh? Man, how the hell you been?"

"I got the gout," Jesse said cheerfully. "But me an' Hector bought the place clean six months ago, helps ease the pain."

"Hey congratulations." Sam gave him a smack on the back, grinning. "'bout the place, not the gout. Hector around?"

"Nah, he went away with his girl for the weekend."

"Hector's got a girl? Hell, I did miss some shit."

Jesse grinned, teeth gold and shining. "You left in such a goddamn hurry. Some people leave forwarding addresses, ya no-good hick."

Sam ducked his head. "Yeah, well." He glanced at Dean and visibly remembered himself. "Oh, sorry, Jesse, this is my brother. This is Dean."

Dean waved a rib bone, mouth full and hands too messy to shake. Jesse sized him up, sharp dark eyes under graying eyebrows, and then said, "So you're the legend."

Dean swallowed too fast, chunk of half-chewed food jammed in his windpipe before he choked it down. He gulped at his water, leaving red sauce fingerprints on the glass.

"What," he managed, weak-voiced. "What're you talkin' about?"

"Sam's got nothin' but stories about his big brother," Jesse told him, winking at Sam as Sam stood there with a mortified expression on his face. "Everything anybody 'round here could do, Sam's brother could do better."

"C'mon, Jesse," Sam mumbled, his face looking hot to the touch. Jesse clapped him on the back, rolling his eyes at Dean.

"You know it's true, boy. Your brother knows too, am I right?"

Dean nodded without really thinking about it, drawn by Jesse's enthusiasm. He was half-grinning, enjoying watching Sam squirm. He wondered what kind of stories Sam told about him. He wondered if it was possible that he had haunted Sam as badly as Sam had haunted him.

"You back, Sam?" Jesse asked him. Sam shook his head.

"Just passin' through."

"Still living, where the hell was it you went, Bumfuck, South Dakota?"

Sam laughed, not too bitter, and nodded. "Sure am."

"How's that workin' out?"

"Ah, you know." Sam didn't elaborate, changing the subject smoothly to Jesse's wife and kids and Dean was surprised how good Sam was at that, deflection and distraction.

They caught up for another few minutes (Sam's version of recent history heavily edited), and then Jesse went back to the grill, but sent over a double order of the best baked beans Dean had ever had in his life, and that occupied them for awhile.

Sam slowed down, leaned back and watched Dean eat. Dean got swiftly self-conscious, trying to remember if Sam had always done that, just _watched_ him, or if it was one of the consequences. It was generally the other way around, Dean thought. _He_ watched _Sam_, always, out of duty and devotion, whenever Sam was within a city block, Dean had him pinned down.

And that, was that supposed to be a clue? Dean watched Sam, knew every inch of him, dimensions and angles and the smallest variations of his gestures and expression, and maybe it was something he was supposed to have grown out of. Sam wasn't an eight year old flight risk anymore, and Dean knew firsthand that he could take care of himself just fine, but he'd never shook the habit. Glancing at Sam was like touching a pocketed talisman, making a wish, when the simple fact of his brother would loosen something in Dean, an opening like wings. Dean _iked_ watching Sam.

He looked down, grabbed for one of the moisty naps for something to do with his hands, and to hide his mouth, which suddenly felt untrustworthy. His hands were shaking the slightest bit as he wiped them clean.

There were probably a million things Dean had been doing without realizing it. This couldn't have come from nowhere; things didn't happen like curses. It could have been going on for years, just under the surface where he still wrestled with Sam even though they were kinda too old, and always half-wanted to push Sam's hair out of his eyes, and never felt totally comfortable if his brother wasn't in the room. The dreams he had about him and Sam in the backseat of the Impala, playing cards and talking shit and nothing graphic but Sam was usually just wearing board shorts, sleek and wet like he'd just gotten out of the lake, Sam laughing when Dean put him in a headlock.

Dean couldn't get a grip on the scope of it. He couldn't look Sam in the eye, maybe never again.

_what the fuck are we gonna do_, Dean thought helplessly, and as if he was answering Sam said out loud:

"You know that part in the first _Tremors_ when they find that guy on the telephone pole who stayed up there until he died?"

Dean took a moment, placed himself in the vicinity of Sam's wavelength. "Because of the vibrations and the subterranean worm monster."

"Exactly. I'm thinking he woulda passed out before dying of thirst. Takes what, four five days? No way that old dude held on to that pole the whole time and then also stayed up there until rigor mortis set in. I call bullshit."

Dean blinked at his brother. Sam had barbecue sauce at the corners of his mouth and covering the pads of his fingers like ink from having his prints taken. He had an odd look on his face, kinda begging Dean to go easy on him but Dean wasn't going any way at all, just trying to eat some ribs and not talk about anything upsetting. He guessed _Tremors_ qualified.

"Um. What made you bring that up?"

Sam shrugged, drinking his Bud and keeping his hand loose around the bottle on the table.

"I was thinking about Mr. Miyagi."

It wasn't a terribly satisfying answer. Dean rubbed at his chin, gave his brother a look like, cut the bullshit, but Sam didn't add anything.

"Okay, well, I call bullshit on Mr. Miyagi gettin' killed off so early," Dean said. "He was funnier'n hell."

Sam nodded. "True. Good death scene, though."

"Yeah, it was gross."

Dean fiddled with his glass, filling it up from the plastic pitcher on the table and then finishing most of it in one swallow. He filled it up again, slower this time. He looked up to find Sam's eyes on him, steady and implacable, and Dean fought a shiver.

"Let's get on the road," he said to the table. "Long drive."

"Eight hours," Sam said, kicking at Dean's feet. "I'll put money on it."

"Dude, I can only overlook the casual lawbreaking for so long," Dean told him, pained.

Sam snorted, but he didn't say anything else. Dean eyed him as he was saying goodbye to Jesse and Dean was paying the check, filing away the ease of Sam's charm, called up out of the blackest moods and deepest drunks. Sam had always been smart and serious and tough, but never really friendly. He never got to know random people over the course of the day the way Dean always seemed to, but apparently in Kansas City Sam did all right.

They got through the suburbs and drove back into the nothing, the flat featureless expanse of the plains under snow. Dean angled himself towards the window and kept his cop sunglasses on like there was sun was blinding off the white, but the cloud cover was dense and lightless and Sam probably saw through it.

He faked sleep for hours, deeply disgusted with himself.

Sam drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and he shifted and coughed and sighed, talked to the car occasionally when he blew her past a semi-truck at a hundred and ten. He found a radio station that seemed to play nothing but Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band, remarkably clear all the way north through Iowa, and sometimes Sam hummed along. A couple hours in, Dean heard him reach behind the seat and dig into the paper sack from the minimart, and then the crack of a can opening followed by the unmistakable scent of a fresh beer.

Hard to ignore that, but Dean needed the practice, and the time, the quiet inside his own head so he could figure out what the hell he was supposed to do, how the fuck they were supposed to _go on_.

He had that picture of Sam lodged in his mind now, taking up all the empty space with his panting mouth and blacked-out eyes, his long fingers sliding around on Dean's stomach as Sam's other hand worked inside his own shorts. Something Dean had never even seen, only heard and felt, but somehow the memory was there in fucking technicolor. Dean kept shaking his head, trying to jar it loose, but it didn't do any good. It struck him, hard as a punch to the chest, that he'd be able to picture Sam like that for the rest of his life, and that scared him worse than anything else.

_years_, Dean thought helplessly, _musta been like this for _years. Watching Sam and putting his hands on him and holding him so close that Sam had choked, and all the while this sick thing growing in Dean, sinking into his bloodstream and distorting his perception, blackly corrupting his motivations. It had taken Sam down, too, fucked with his head relentlessly until he thought that it was okay, that Dean wanted it.

_do want it_, he heard immediately, a constant dull heat coloring his face. Sam's giant hands and the wicked curve of his mouth, his endless legs and slatted hips, his shoulders blotting out the sun. Dean wanted to push Sam's shirt up and lick his stomach, bite the bones of his hips. He wanted Sam on his knees. Bent over the hood of their car.

Dean wanted to scream. If anyone else in the world had been thinking this shit about his little brother, Dean would have literally shot them in the head.

The engine roared, Sam executing neat weaves through the sparse traffic, and Dean stared unblinking from behind his sunglasses, trying to be soothed by the feel of the Impala around him. She'd always moved best at high speeds.

He counted backwards, and it had been sixteen months since Dean had given Sam his car.

Sam had just broken the news a couple days before. He'd taken Dean out to the Spoke and it was loud, juke bellowing some song about a flood, half the town crushed together on the dancefloor, two-stepping.

Sam leaned on the wall, shoulder to shoulder with his brother, and because it was loud, he put his mouth close to Dean's ear and half-shouted, "I asked Jessica to marry me and she said yes."

Dean had pulled away, tried to get a look at Sam's face and it was all shadows and blue neon except for his grin, frantic and happy and faintly pleading. Dean didn't make him repeat it, believed him the first time for once. He wanted to ask why, but that wasn't the right thing to say, and anyway, Dean had his suspicions. So he hollered congratulations and spotted the next few rounds, telling Sam that it was gonna be great, she was so far out of his league it wasn't even right, but goddamn boy.

It wasn't like it had been a surprise. Sam and Jess had grown up throwing clots of dirt at each other, had been dramatically together and estranged at various points during high school, and after Sam came back from Kansas City, it was only a week or two before she was showing up at the house again. Sam had moved in with her three months after their father's funeral, her little house with the chipping white paint and pale blue ceilings, and he'd meet Dean for breakfast at the cafe some mornings with scratches on the back of his neck, hickeys under the line of his jaw, sleepy sated grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.

Dean had been all for it. Sam was pretty fucked up after their dad had died, and Jess was the only one who could get him to act like a human being for longer than five minutes at a stretch. Dean wasn't any good to his brother back then, didn't even want to look at Sam because Sam had Dad's eyes; they brought out the worst in each other, made vicious by their loneliness and misery. So Jess had taken care of Sam. Dean had thanked God for her more than once.

Two days after Sam had told Dean about his engagement and asked Dean to be his best man in a weirdly formal tone, Dean picked him up from the salvage yard and they drove out to the ravine. They shared a green apple left over from Sam's lunch, sour and sharp on Dean's tongue, and the Mexican beer that the general store was selling that month, and Sam hucked stones into the gorge, whole body throws that traveled so far there was no sound of impact.

Dean had finished his beer and set the bottle down on the ground, gone to stand next to where his brother was backlit by the setting sun, and he'd held out the key to the Impala on the palm of his hand. Dean had said, "Here, Sam, she's yours," all rushed and breathless with this sudden feeling like he'd been hollowed out, echoing and light enough to float.

Sam had laughed in disbelief, and he tried to refuse but Dean had insisted, pushing the key at him and swallowing hard as Sam's eyes shone silver as a badge. Sam had taken the key, a massive grin on his face, and twirled it around his thumb, told Dean that it was perfect--he and Jessica were moving to California after the wedding and fuck, the Impala on those coastal highways, can you imagine?

And Dean was struck dumb by shock, but he managed to keep a moronic smile on his face, laughed right along with him. _California_, pretty name like a mythical city, stuck like a fishhook in Dean's mind, an incantation seared in memory, a lesser prayer. Sam was back to his old tricks, eyes fixed on the farther horizon.

Dean didn't really know what his intentions were when he decided to give Sam his car as an engagement present (it wasn't a bribe; Dean was almost certain that it hadn't been a bribe), but he was sure Sam had misunderstood him in some fundamental way. The very last thing he meant for his brother to do was fucking leave again. Not just leave, leave in _Dean's car_.

To his credit, Sam tried to give her back three times, even once while perfectly sober. Dean, who could do stubborn just as well as the rest of his family, refused him each time. It had become all warped in his mind, convinced that the Impala was the price he'd paid so that Sam could get out and get on, marry his girl and live with her in a place where it never got cold.

And it seemed right, because their dad had given the car to Dean and Dean had gotten his years out of her and now it was Sam's turn, Sam and the new family he was willing into existence out of thin air. This could go on for decades, Dean remembered thinking, generations bound by sky-black steel.

Sam had never made it to California, nor the altar. He lost Jess three weeks before their wedding day. It had been two months before the baby was due.

Since then the Impala had been Sam's through and through. He'd never again offered her back to Dean.

Dean would never ask.

"Food, Dean."

Dean was good; he barely flinched. He opened his eyes to find that it was full dark, or anyway looked that way through mirrored lenses. He listened to Sam huffing out a breath.

"You ain't asleep, you ain't _been_ asleep, so look alive and tell me what you want t'eat."

Sam punched him solidly on the shoulder. It reverberated, chattered Dean's teeth, and then Sam punched him again, soft and kinda aimless.

Dean straightened up, if only so Sam would stop touching him. He pulled off his shades, rubbed his eyes. It was only twilight still, dusk, but they were getting into the woods, patches of the road lightless and unmarked. Dean relaxed a little, glad after the fields and badlands to see something that looked more like home.

"Whatever, man, I don't care."

Sam tossed an irritated look his way. He looked rough, shoulders slumped and four or five days scruff darkening his face.

"Since when do you not care about food?"

"Care about food, just not about what kind of food." Dean pressed his fingers into his stomach, training his gaze on the wedge of road revealed by the headlights. "Whatever you wanna get's fine."

Sam muttered under his breath, and Dean eyed his hands on the wheel, driving with his palms, fingers loose. He thought about arm-wrestling with Sam, and thumb war in the backseat of the car, the encyclopedia entry he could write about Sam's hands. He wouldn't be able to touch him in good conscience anymore, Dean realized with a creeping sense of horror. Neither of them could be trusted.

They got cheeseburgers at the last drive-thru until Spearfish. Ate sitting on the hood of the car just outside Sturgis, conspicuously not talking to each other, staring at the highway. Dean didn't have much of an appetite.

Twenty minutes from home, with the way Sam was driving, and Dean was trying to keep a hold of himself, sideways eyeing the lanky bend of his brother's legs against the side of the car. Dean found it kinda incredible that something like this could happen and he still had to go in to work on Monday. All the other rules of existence seemed to be in effect, but how was Dean supposed to live in the same house as Sam and have coffee with him in the morning? Go through his day and come home to Sam already half loaded and pliable, red-lit by the flickering light of special effects gore, and what was Dean supposed to do then?

Sam balled up the burger wrapper and the bag and pitched it into a nearby bin. Once his hands were empty, Dean noticed immediately that they were shaking.

"Sam, you okay?" he heard, a second late recognizing the voice as his own. It was like muscle memory, like stripping and cleaning a weapon, making sure Sam was okay; something he didn't even think about.

Twitching, Sam looked over at Dean and then down at his trembling hands. His face collapsed, and he slumped, looking very tired and very young for a moment before his mouth hardened, cracked a dark smile.

"I"m fine." Sam swiped his arm across his mouth. "Just need a goddamn drink."

Dean opened his mouth, didn't say anything. He never knew what to say. He'd tried everything on their father and nothing had worked, and now Dean had to relive his history knowing in advance that all his efforts were hopeless.

Dean rubbed his face, drained. He quit on his fries even though he'd only managed half, and sucked at his root beer, looking down.

"Hey Dean."

Something in Sam's voice, something barbed and low, had Dean's head jerking up, and Sam was leaning towards him, just enough for it to be too close, too implicit, and Dean froze but Sam went just that far and no farther. Sam's eyes were heavy, muddy midway green color that kept fucking with Dean's head, and he licked his lips quickly before saying:

"I'll let you drive her if you let me pick up a fifth."

Dean tipped back, swallowing panic, and slid off the car, away from Sam. He shook his head, trying to clear it, get rid of that look of blatant _invitation_ on his brother's face. His hands were in fists again.

"Dude, no," Dean said.

Sam pulled out his keys, held them up with a cheshire smile. "Sorry, I misspoke. Shoulda said, Dean, I'm gonna pick up a fifth. You wanna drive?"

"Sam-" Dean began, but Sam tossed the keys at him and he was distracted with catching them, and Sam got far enough away that Dean would have felt stupid chasing after. He watched Sam walk across the long parking lot towards the frantic glow of a liquor store. The keys cut into his palms, his grip ruthless.

When Sam came back, Dean had the car running, seeking aimlessly up and down the radio dial. Sam already had the bottle cracked, folding himself into shotgun with a rough-edged sigh. His hands were steady now, Dean noticed, feeling a weird bitter disappointment. One hand around the neck of the bottle, long fingers curved and loose, and Dean fought a tide of dirty thoughts, gripping the steering wheel.

"You gonna drive or stare at me?" Sam asked flatly.

Dean started, snatched his eyes away. He hadn't even realized.

He got them back on the highway, feeling punch-drunk and nauseous, before saying, "This whole self-destructive thing is gettin' pretty old, Sammy."

It was easier to talk with his eyes on the road, Sam slouched in his peripheral vision, the streetlights flashing across the bottle.

"Ah," Sam said, dismissive. "Runs in the family."

It was a really mean thing for him to say, actually, even if neither of them realized it for a moment because Sam was just being a smartass. Then Dean took a sharp, aborted breath, a dense weight like he'd been kicked in the ribs.

"Don't say that," he said, too loud and uneven and Sam was the one staring now, biting his lip and blinking at Dean from behind his stupid goddamn hair. "Don't. Quit acting like this is all some fuckin' joke."

"Oh my lord, worst joke ever." Sam smirked, but it didn't hold up, wavery at the edges and looking more like he was on the verge of tears.

"I will beat the living shit out of you, Sam, so help me-" Dean threatened, feeling his control slip.

"Go the fuck ahead, I don't care. You think I don't know what this disease is called?" Sam actually laughed, turning away and passing his hand over his eyes. "It's because of Dad, or because I'm a fuck-up all on my own, or because of Jess and the baby, or, or because of you. I got my fuckin' reasons, Dean. I got _cause_."

That shut Dean up for a minute, disarmed him completely. Sam never talked about the perverse turns his life had taken over the past few years, just went about the matter-of-fact business of obliterating his memory, acting like it was expected of him, the standard procedure. And maybe it was, Dean thought. A situation as fucked up as this one had no healthy reaction. A person's response _should_ be fucked up. It was only fair. This was a fucking tragedy.

But Dean had to watch it happening. Dean wasn't really built to just watch.

"Nobody's arguing with you about that," Dean said eventually, dropped into a lower register. "It's just the consequences, Sam, that's all I'm. That's all."

Sam shook his head, staring out the window at the black wall of trees streaking past. He was pressing his knuckle against his leg but it wouldn't pop. Hanging on to that bottle like the anchor of his place in the universe, the only thing keeping him safe from black holes.

"I get it, Dean," Sam said, tired. "I'd be the same way if it were you."

Dean tightened his hold on the wheel, biting his teeth together. Several times, he'd thought that he would trade places with Sam in a heartbeat, take the flattening weight of grief and desolation off his brother's shoulders because Sam shouldn't have to bear it; he'd always been the better brother. It had always been Dean's job to make sure Sammy was okay.

He didn't say that to Sam. He didn't know what to say to Sam.

"Just," Sam said. "Lemme go on some stuff, huh? Gimme some time."

_Been ten months_, Dean almost said, bit back at the last second. He nodded jerkily. It was still an open wound, Sam still despondent and manic and barely functioning. Dean had put all his faith in time's power to heal, and here they were no noticeably better than when they'd started.

Quiet for a second, space for Dean to wonder if he'd picked a fight about Sam's drinking to avoid talking about the handjob thing, and then Sam was saying:

"You call this driving?"

and Dean was obliged to put the pedal on the floor, listening to the great consuming roar of the engine as he opened her up.

(break)

Back in Sturgis, there was the closest hospital to Kingston, some saint's name that Dean could never remember. Built low to the ground out of brown-colored bricks, spindly winter trees like ink sketches against the snow, and Dean used to park at the deserted far end of the parking lot where he could leave the car all night without worrying about her getting dinged.

He knew the place by heart: the shortcut through radiology to the cafeteria, the alcove formed by dumpsters out back where the lab techs took their smoke breaks, the nodding birthday balloons tied to the ends of beds in the children's ward. Dean knew most of the night shift by name, cadging free coffee and the Powerbars the residents lived off of, flirting with the nurses, playing cards with the janitor at three in the morning. He probably would have liked the place if he never had to go into his father's room.

John had been in and out of the hospital all through the last winter of his life. Dean remembered how it built, how he kept getting more and more tired and took longer to rise in the mornings, and how he'd chalked it up to his dad just getting old. The jaundice came on so subtly Dean didn't even notice it; Pastor Jim came to visit and the first thing he said was, "Christ, John, what've you got?" and Dean remembered hearing it like a cold fist closing around his heart.

It was only a month or two after that, when John lost consciousness at the Roadhouse and Ellen put him in the back to sleep it off for a couple hours, couldn't wake him up at closing. Phone call in the middle of the night, Dean groping from under the sheets and half-expecting to find Sam drunk on the other end, but instead it was Ellen, saying as she had his whole life, "It's your dad, Dean," only this time she was stammering and hard to make out.

That night was the first time Dean went to the hospital in Sturgis. His dad was stripped and put in a paper johnny and made to look frail and impossibly vulnerable, and against the starched white of the sheets Dean could see how yellow his skin was. Standing over him, Dean experienced a flood of terror stronger than anything since he was a little kid. It made him shake, staring at his father and trying to see the man who had run into the fire, the man who had come out somewhat less than whole.

Dean hid out in his car, the far end of the hospital parking lot like Siberia, icy breath billowing as he hunched over the wheel and called his brother.

Sam didn't answer the first four times Dean tried him, but on the fifth he snatched up the phone and his voice shattered into being, snarling, "Mother_fucker_ it is three in the goddamn morning-"

"Sammy."

That was it, only word Dean could say and only thing he needed to say, because Sam fell immediately silent, his breath hushed and uncertain against the receiver, before he said carefully, "What's wrong, Dean?"

All Dean had to say was, "Dad," and Sam's breathing drew ragged before he said, "I'm leavin' right now. Right this second," and he was being literal, showed up a little more than seven hours later in the falling snow with no socks under his shoes, coat thrown on over sweats and a holey T-shirt.

He found Dean in the hospital hallway, sitting opposite a vending machine and dully memorizing the order of the candy bars. Sam, shoes squeaking on the linoleum, grabbed Dean's shoulders and hauled him up and hugged him, rib-crushing the way Sam's hugs always were. Dean gasped against his brother's shoulder, forearms pressing hard on Sam's back, the physical heft and warmth of Sam hitting him like a wave.

He took Sam to see their dad and Sam just stood at the foot of the bed for a long time, not coming any closer. John's closed eyes were sunken, lids puffy and tinged purple. His hands rested like props at his sides, waxy and insensate. Dean watched Sam watching John, leaning in the doorway and trying not to think about how fragile his family looked from this angle.

Sam and Dean went to get coffee in the caf, and sitting across from his brother, not making eye contact, Sam said that he would come back. Help out until Dad got better.

It was a sincere force of will for Dean to keep from crushing his styrofoam cup, fingers flexing and making coffee slosh over the rim. Sam wouldn't meet his eyes, looking over at a table full of nurses in pastel-colored scrubs, but his jaw was set in a familiar way, the decision already made.

Dean thought about how he should say, _no sam, you don't have to_, and get Sam to go back to his classes and job and whatever else he had in Kansas City, not let him fuck up his whole escape plan with a last-minute technicality, but the words wouldn't come. Just Sam, sitting across from Dean with his hair bedheaded and wrecked by the wind at a hundred and ten miles an hour, Sam with his boyishly tough face and monster hands, Sam close enough for Dean to touch if he needed to. Just Sam, and Dean nodded, said that was probably a good idea.

He tried not to acknowledge the morbid and growing certainty he had that his dad was not going to get better. Tried not to think that he had Sam back for good now, having made some kind of unholy trade, a deal at the crossroads.

Sam took a weekend and two day-long trips to get his stuff moved, overcrowded into his childhood bedroom, garbage bags of clothes spilling out into the hallway. His muddy boots tangled with Dean's in the front hallway, his orange juice without pulp shouldering aside the milk in the fridge. Sam just resumed, like no time had passed. Took up his spot at Dean's right hand, at the forefront of his mind.

John got sicker as the weather got colder. He'd come home for a week or two at a stretch, moving slow and looming like a spectre, and Sam would get nervous and solicitous, hovering until John snapped him away. Dean kept the schedule for his dad's medications and talked to his doctor at least once a day, bought the groceries and paid the bills, all the basic logistical stuff that no one else ever thought of, and in that way he maintained an element of control. He and Sam went out drinking every night, reckless and wild and daring fate, egging each other on and laughing all crazed and disjointed.

The world around them newsprint-gray and unfeeling, John ended up back in the hospital over and over, until Dean knew the route blindfolded and Sam kept referring to the place as "our winter home," no matter how hard Dean smacked him.

It took a long time. Old soldiers never die, Dean thought on a broken loop, watching his father fade away.

Night after night of stale cafeteria food and Sam eating two million things of red jell-o, the squeal of black rubber wheels on linoleum, the persistent undercurrent of pained moans, and Dean and his brother sat side by side at John's bedside. The three of them played never-ending hands of gin, stared dully through late-night talk shows and infomercials. Talking in fits and starts, long stretches of nothing but the machines' beeping, and Dean watched Sam yawning against the back of his wrist, burying his hand in his hair and leaning on his elbow. Dean kept seeing these shards of his dad in Sam, like barbs catching pieces of his memory and tearing them out. Something in the way Sam slumped. Something about the line of Sam's jaw when he had his mind made up.

John died on a Thursday.

Dean had been in their usual parking lot corner, sleeping in the backseat of the Impala, having worked the swing shift the night before. He remembered his dream, a flooded subway tunnel and Sam laughing as he fell down a flight of stone steps and disappeared beneath the black water.

He was startled awake by the door opening, and Sam's voice destroying the silence, chanting, "Dean, Dean," and crawling over Dean's legs. Dean half sat-up, his head muzzy and aching, and he saw that Sam was weeping and it made him go stuttering and erratic with fear. Gripping Sam's shoulders, pulling himself up and wrapping an arm around Sam's back, Dean pressed his hand flat to Sam's cheek and demanded, "What happened?"

Sam couldn't answer, sobbing into Dean's hand and Dean knew. Of course he knew.

He could feel Sam's tears running down the inside of his wrist. Pressed his hand into Sam's hair and pulled Sam's face against his throat, held him like that as he felt Sam's arms trembling hard against his sides. They might have been like that for hours, Dean would never really know. It felt like days.

Life was viciously hard for a few weeks, the whole town insisting on expressing their condolences when Sam and Dean were much more interested in getting loaded out at the ravine, in the dark and the silence. They buried their father in Lawrence and Bobby was the only thing that kept Dean from going drunk; Sam had no such conditions.

It was like he had lost all of his borders, the basic geography all out of whack. He was Dean Winchester, John's boy. He still had a lot of stuff to ask his dad; Dean wasn't ready yet.

Sam started a bar fight sometime around Valentine's Day (not the first swing--never--but the guy accused him of hustling and that was true) and it evolved inevitably into a full-blown brawl. Dean might have fought back-to-back with his brother for a few hectic minutes, just for old time's sake. Sam's nose was bleeding, red on his teeth and Dean's hands were killing him when Bobby came in putting bullets in the heavy timbers of the roof, bellowing for order.

Most everybody got a citation and a stern talking-to, but Sam and Dean Bobby locked in the back of a cruiser until he was done with the others. Sam tipped his head far back on the seat to stop the bleeding, and Dean relocated a knuckle with a wet pop, hissing between his teeth.

Bobby came back and slammed the car door, glowering at them in the rearview for a long moment. Dean tried not to squirm. Sam looked impassive, faintly contemptuous.

"You boys been having a rough go," Bobby said. "I don't blame you; couldn't, I remember how I was when my daddy passed. You're pissed off and you wanna hurt something, make somebody pay. I know."

Bobby turned in his seat, met their eyes through the heavy mesh. "But that's enough now." Gave Sam a steely look, then shifted it to Dean. "You get me?"

Dean nodded automatically. A moment of hesitation, and then Sam followed suit. There was something thick stuck in Dean's throat, shame-faced with his eyes lowered.

He glanced at Sam, found his brother with defiance still shining on his face, and Dean reached out, put his hand over Sam's fist. Sam started, looked over at Dean with bruises already starting to show. Dean gave him a half-smile, asked him wordlessly to settle down, and Sam sank back, exhaling.

Bobby drove them home. Dean went in to the station the next morning freshly-shaven and alert, intent on making his amends. Sam went back to fucking around at the salvage yard some of the time and fucking around with Jessica the rest of the time, and a year passed slowly.

Jess had her own place with an adult-sized bed and everything, but Sam liked bringing her back to the house, where she sometimes got fed up with all the canned food and microwaveable meals and fixed them a real dinner, enough for leftovers. It was a surefire way to make Dean more receptive, something not a whole lot of Sam's other girlfriends had figured out, but he liked her aside from the free food. She took all of Sam's shit and gave back twice as good. She called Dean 'ugly,' but in such a way as to be endearing.

She liked their monster movies and slasher flicks, in equal measures delighted and repulsed by the painstaking fake gore, turning her face into Sam's arm and shuddering while wearing a grin. She and Sam would share a bowl of popcorn and the smell would make Dean sick to his stomach like always, but he wouldn't let on because some of those nights Sam seemed honestly happy again, butter shining on his fingers and his mouth as he nudged at Jess, looking for a kiss.

The three of them went to the Spoke and Sam and Dean took turns dancing with her, through the haze of smoke and neon beer signs. Jessica told dirty jokes in the back booth, making Sammy laugh until his face was bright red, his eyes screwed up. Sam broke off a curly fry ring and asked Jess to marry him, just kidding around but Dean was sober enough to recognize the foreshadowing.

Dean's room shared a wall with Sam's. Lying on his back, watching the fleshless fingers of a tree scratch at the window, Dean could hear them in there, the soft give of bed springs and Sam muttering curses and Jess breathing out fast and high-pitched. Dean tried not to listen, but the wall might as well have been cardboard. He tried not to picture them but Jessica was drop dead gorgeous and sometimes he couldn't help it.

Sam had moved out without really telling his brother. Dean had come home from the station very late and Sam's door was shut and silent and Dean went right to sleep. He awoke to the full strength of day, and Sam's door still closed, no milky cereal bowl on the coffee table or picked-apart newspaper on the kitchen counter. No sign of him all that day and all the next, and when Dean opened the door to Sam's room he found the closet ransacked and the drawers barren, the lamp missing from the bedside table.

Dean had experienced a moment or two of visceral panic, the kind of thing that ripped clean through and left bloody trenches behind. He stifled it, let the anger come.

He found Sam at the Roadhouse, their dad's bar that Sam usually abhorred in favor of the Spoke, but there his little brother was, shooting pool with a couple good ol' boys in stained trucker caps. Softening them up, Dean could tell, getting ready to suggest they make things a little more interesting. Sam half-smiled when he saw Dean, ducked his head down.

Dean had wanted to take Sam into the alley and have it out with him properly, no fear of witnesses, but Sam wouldn't leave his beer and wouldn't apologize to his brother.

"Dude, you should be glad, we're gettin' out of your way. No more waiting for the shower in the morning, huh?"

Sam grinned, egging Dean, but Dean shook his head, not charmed. "Rather have the hassle than a fuckin' empty house."

Hiking his eyebrows, Sam fiddled with a beer coaster, spinning it like a coin on the bar. He wasn't making a whole lot of eye contact. "I dunno, we want a place that ours. Still feels like your house, back home. Dad's house."

Dean didn't have an answer to that. Sam glanced at him, let a smile curve on his face.

"And we're pretty done with the twin bed, too."

Flashing on the midnight soundtrack through the wall, Dean felt his face heat. Startlingly specific, he kept hearing Sam's voice break on the word _please_. He remembered wanting to shake Sam, get hands on him in some concrete way, but he ended up just clutching the bar.

"You still. You say goodbye, Sam," Dean told him. "You _tell_ me, you don't just go missing again."

Sam's eyes jumped to Dean's face and he went still, his hand locking around his beer. Complicated expression on Sam's face, eyebrows up and startled and his mouth in a cynical knot, the better part of a smirk. Dean wondered if it honestly hadn't occurred to Sam that Dean would have a problem with him leaving.

"I. Not missing, Dean, I'm so easily found." Sam tried a grin; no luck. He coughed, cleared his throat. "You'll be okay."

Dean scoffed behind his hand. "Yeah."

Then Sam looked kinda guilt-stricken but he covered it well. He bought Dean a beer and let him win two games of pool before Dean told him to knock it the fuck off. He didn't want that kind of sympathy. Or any kind, really. He was most comfortable left all alone with his despair.

Once Sam and Jess were living together, it was only a matter of time before they got engaged. Once engaged, it was only a matter of time before Sam admitted to Dean that he'd knocked her up.

"But it's okay," Sam had said with a shrug. "I love the hell outta her, I was probably gonna end up marrying her anyway."

"Now you get a kid out of it, too," Dean said, sitting across from Sam at the cafe.

"Kids're all right." Sam made an indistinct gesture, sucking on his lemonade straw. "She's gonna be awesome at it. I'm just gonna, you know, muddle through. Try not to fuck up too bad."

"Pretty low bar you've set for yourself there, Sammy."

Sam laughed. "Don't worry, I'll still find a way to trip over that motherfucker."

And Dean had laughed, feeling like an echo.

Dean missed his father and he missed his car and soon enough he would be obliged to miss his brother, too, a final fatal straw. His little town was in a slow process of decay: Gordon Walker broke his wife's jaw on Thanksgiving; Dean and Bobby rousted a trailer park meth lab in the flats, and had to turn two dead-eyed toddlers over to state services, still bearing the cartoon band-aids Dean had affixed to their cuts and scrapes.

Jessica started to show over the winter, graceful bump stretching her shirts, and she and Sam came over to Dean's place for dinner on Sundays. Jess fell asleep on the couch watching the news every time, and Sam and Dean would haul one of the space heaters out onto the porch and drink beer while they watched the snow fall, talking about things that had been and things that were to come. Sam was scared of getting married, and having a kid, and moving to California, but he'd thrown himself into all of it full-bore, the only way Sam knew how. When he kissed Jessica, he spread his hand flat on the bump, never quite able to believe it.

And then on a beautiful day in March, the sky an overarching blue, Dean was zapping speeders, his cruiser sheltered in a copse off the highway. Bored and sleepy in the unseasonable warmth, Dean was thinking about digging out the emergency Snickers he kept in the glove compartment, when his radio crackled to life.

It was Bobby, clogged with static and sounding old, and he told Dean that Jessica Moore had had a seizure at work and been rushed to the hospital in Sturgis. Sam had gone with her.

Dean sped out, shedding leaves and dust, punched his lights and siren and let the

banshee-howl of it split the afternoon. Every road cleared before him, Dean drove tasting his heart, praying in jagged riffs and broken faithless pleas, having never learned the real words.

Jess was already gone by the time he got there. Dean found his brother in the men's room, punching the tile walls and denting the hell out of the paper towel dispenser. Sam's hands were bloody and swelling, his eyes enormous and white and dry, his mouth hanging slack. He spun on Dean, swatted away Dean's reaching hands and clocked him hard across the jaw, and then Sam fell to his knees, began to weep.

Dean knelt before him, cradled Sam's head in his hands like it was made of glass. Eyes burning with tears because Dean couldn't see Sam like this, just flat-out could not bear it. Begging Sam to stop, promising that it would be okay, lying to him and feeling the rush of grief forcing its way under Sam's skin, making him shudder and blanch. There wasn't anything Dean could do, his hands pressing on Sam and his face aching where his brother had hit him.

The baby was still alive. Devastatingly small and trapped under thick plastic, Sam had a son.

For two days, Sam had a son.

They didn't leave the hospital. Dean paced the length of every corridor, his boots leaving scuff marks on the linoleum, needing the movement and daydreaming of escape. He took restless naps in empty rooms and on the floor at Sam's feet. He brought Sam red jell-o and cheese sandwiches and chocolate bars and Sam never ate enough to satisfy Dean. Sam never slept. He watched his son roll and shift and cry silently inside the incubator, his hands cramped on his knees.

Ellen came with homemade biscuits and reddened eyes (Jess had been friends with her daughter before Jo had moved away), and Dean was relieved to see her at first, proof of a decent world still in existence somewhere outside the hospital doors. All she could say was, "Oh, Sam," and she tried to touch Sam's head but he jerked away. She and Dean got coffee in the caf, butter in packets for their biscuits, and Dean explained it to Ellen haltingly, trying to remember everything the doctor had told him.

Eclampsia was the name of the thing. There had likely been warning signs that were missed. It had not been quick. It had not been merciful in any way. The baby, Dean's tiny nephew closing his fists on nothing, was getting weaker.

Ellen had let Dean's monotone run out, and then she grabbed his hand. He gave her a shaky smile, squeezed her fingers and tried to pull away but she wouldn't let him. His vision blurred, and he didn't want to cry in front of her but she said, "He'll survive it, Dean," and Dean broke down. Sobbed like he was the one dying, because he didn't believe Ellen, not for a single second.

Just before dawn on the third day, Sam's son, nameless and unknown, went to join his mother. The smallest soul, Dean remembered thinking, a smudge of white against the lightening sky, like a feather caught on the wind.

Dean took his brother home. Sam stayed blind-drunk for two weeks straight, slurring and asking how it was possible to miss a child he'd never even held, demanding that Dean tell him what his son's name should have been.

Dean formed himself into a wall, a sheer cliff for the tidal roar of Sam's loss to crash against. He made himself solid and senseless and strong, and he swore that he would get Sam through this, be whatever he needed. Dean didn't have any more family to spare, and he wasn't going to risk it. Sam could hit him or curse him or blame him, anything, use him and fuck him up and Dean would stay no matter what.

As long as it took, as bad as it could get, Dean would stay right here.

(break)

They got back home and puttered nervously around the house for a little while, encompassed by silence and the new distance between them, and then Sam split, slamming out the door without even shouting to let Dean know he was going.

Dean kicked his laundry basket over when he heard the growl of the Impala taking off, sour smell of dirty clothes rising and subsiding. He gathered up empties from the coffee table and kitchen table and went out back, hurling glass bottles into tree trunks in the cold dark. Each explosion jarred Dean, a little jerk and something trembling bone-deep.

He wanted to run, beat this out, but the snow was thick on the ground and the roads weren't safe.

Sam didn't come home that night, nor the next. Dean caught snatches of him from people around town: Sam at the cafe fifteen minutes before Dean came in, ordering the exact same pie and coffee; Sam at the Spoke, dancing with every girl who'd ever had a crush on him; Sam getting ticketed for drag racing with Andy and Anson Beckett out on the fire road.

But he saw none of Sam himself and Dean got edgy, like he was waiting for a death sentence to be handed down. He didn't know why the immediacy hadn't faded, the urgent press of _Sam_ inside his mind. Lawrence had been a fever, two hearts broken too young and a night of drinking and a storm outside and they couldn't be held responsible for what happened after that.

But they were back now, back in their proscribed roles, their neat little boxes. Sam was just Dean's brother, irritating and smartmouthed and prone to violence, and nothing about him should make Dean's mouth go dry or sweat to break out across the entire surface of his skin, but there he was.

He felt cheated somehow, conned into letting the memory follow him home. He felt sick, twisted, letting Sam live in his head like that, creep under the sheets with Dean at the end of the day. He caught himself wondering about Sam, wondering if he was embarrassed or appalled at what he'd done, or maybe it had stuck with him too and he was going nuts imagining Dean as Dean had been, moaning and arching and moving his hips to the rhythm of Sam's hand, and Dean had to bite his tongue to stop thinking about it.

It didn't matter if Sam wanted it, Dean reminded himself six hundred times a day. It wasn't suddenly okay just because they both wanted it.

And Sam probably didn't, anyway.

It was three in the morning and Dean wasn't sleeping, watching _The Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ and siding with Leatherface against the annoying teenagers like usual, and Sam came stumbling home. Dean was wired on black coffee and Red Bull and vodka, about six hours from hunting his brother down like a dog, and Sam walked in amid a miniature cyclone of snow.

"Close the door," Dean said automatically, eyeing him from down the hallway. His pulse jumped at the sight of Sam standing there disheveled in clothes he'd been wearing for three days.

Sam swung the door shut, almost fell yanking off his boots and came thumping down the hallway, stripping off his coat and leaving it on the floor. He was listing, not quite steady. Blinking at the television, he commented, "Meathook. Love the meathook."

Dean did his best not to stare. The cold had left color on Sam's cheeks, his eyes glassy and sparkling and his hair a damp knotted mess. His hands were pale and seemed unnaturally big, scabs over each of his knuckles. Sam stood hesitantly, glancing at the spot on the couch next to Dean and Dean held his breath.

Sam sat down, farther away than he usually sat but still in the _room_, which felt like more than Dean could have asked for. Sam leaned back, kicked his feet up on the table. Every muscle in Dean's body abruptly lost its tension, slumping him down into the cushions.

"Where you been, Sammy?" Dean asked after a moment of acclimation had passed.

Hitching a shoulder, Sam said without looking away from the movie, "'round."

"That all I get?"

Sam gave him a sideways glance, rubbing at a damp patch on his shoulder where the snow had seeped through. "You don't really wanna know, Dean."

Dean considered that. "'kay." He considered some other stuff, swallowing a few times. "You back now?"

"I guess." Sam paused, let it feel significant. "If you still want me here."

Dean was startled, didn't show it. He'd actually never once thought of asking Sam to move out. Seemed odd, in retrospect, with all he was doing to rebuild the necessary walls between him and his brother. Definitely seemed like an option that at least should have been on the table.

"Yeah," he said. "'Course, Sam."

Sam's throat moved as he swallowed, eyes trained on the television again, and Dean had the disorienting thought that Sam was _afraid_ of him. Moving slow and cautious like Dean was a predator on a broken chain, like Sam was making his way blind. There was an overriding sense of wrongness at the idea of it, a forceful rejection that Dean felt rise from the bottom of his gut.

He stared at his brother, helpless.

"I, um," Sam began, profile etched as if in marble. "I won't try anything. I don' want you to, to, uh. Worry. 'bout that."

Dean shook his head, his mind stuttering. "What. What're you." He trailed off, fascinated by the soft drunk look of Sam's mouth, stretch of clean neck under his wrecked hair.

"Know I shouldn't have," Sam said into the awkward silence. "An' I'm not--I won't. Not again."

"Sam," Dean said, and that was it. His vocabulary ended there.

The corner of Sam's mouth twisted up, some mirthless inside joke told in his head. He rubbed at his eye with the inside of his wrist, looking plainly exhausted.

"Shoulda seen your face, man," Sam mumbled, slouching lower. "Like the best prank ever, 'cept. 'Cept it wasn't."

Sam's voice all fucked up and scratched, and Dean suffered this deep keening feeling, this matchlight of terrified hope in the back of his mind.

"You think about it, Sammy?" he asked in a whisper.

Sam froze, teeth pressing into his lower lip. He angled Dean a searching look, heat banked in his eyes and Dean kept shivering every time his gaze met his brother's, an uncontrollable new tic.

"Do you?" Sam asked in the same whisper, like boys telling secrets.

Dean felt the _yes_ like it was physically wedged in his throat. It cut off his air, trying to force itself into being, and Dean could see the future if he let it, the next few minutes at least, he could see Sam's huge hands pressing his shoulders into the couch and Sam's mouth open against his own, Sam groaning with Dean's palms flat on his throat. Just one word, just one moment was all it would take, their ruin close enough to taste.

"Can't," he said instead. He tried not to notice how Sam's face collapsed. "You know we can't."

Sam sucked at his lip, blinking fast. "We. We can do whatever we want."

Shaking his head, Dean wove together his hands, locked his thumbs tight. His blood had been electrically charged, buzzing under his skin. He was jacked on caffeine and kinda drunk and his brother seemed to be saying that he wanted them to fuck and Dean kept forgetting why he had to say no.

_it'll fuck him up worse_, Dean thought suddenly, and it was a thrown bucket of ice water. Sam was already as damaged as a person could get while still remaining upright. He might want more but he wouldn't be able to take it; Dean wouldn't do that to him.

"No, Sam." he said softly. Sam made a small noise that twisted like a knife in Dean's chest.

"C'mon," Sam breathed out, and Dean had to shut his eyes, steel himself against it.

"Said no."

"Dean-" and Sam's fingers curled around Dean's arm, bare skin just under his shirtsleeve and Dean's body jerked, pulled away.

"Jesus, Sam, _no_," and Dean's voice gave out, more like a plea than a demand, and he knew that Sam would have him in another minute, have him begging and thrashing and shameless and any other way Sam wanted him.

But the third time was the charm, and Sam retreated, throttled hurt sound from the back of his throat. Sam sniffed, muttered a few imprecations and called Dean a cocksucker with a lace of solid _want_ thick through his voice. Dean didn't react, save a muscle jumping in his jaw. He sat tensed through the rest of the movie, not daring to look over at Sam until the heroine was cackling with hysterical laughter in the back of the pickup truck and Dean could hear his brother snoring.

Dean slid off the couch, careful to avoid waking him, and he moved shakily to the front door, stepped out into the bible-black night. He was in shirtsleeves and socks, splinters from the porch needling at his feet and the skin on his forearms taut and broken out in goosebumps. Steam poured out of his mouth and Dean imagined it rising from his skin, from every place Sam had ever touched him.

He stood out there until he was half-frozen. Clutched his elbows and chattered and counted stars, waiting to go numb.

(break)


	4. Chapter 4

They settled into this strange routine, treating each other like crystal. Sam stayed in his room a lot. Dean could hear movie shrieks and the howling of werewolves through the wall. He made enough dinner for two people and left Sam's in the oven; it was always gone in the morning.

Dean saw glimpses of him. Sam passing like a poltergeist across doorways, his tousled head bobbing past the window as he ducked around the side of the house. Sam leaning against the counter eating cereal when Dean came in, Sam's eyes cutting and skidding over him and Sam flushed, ears pink, mumbled something and vanished, leaving his bowl half-eaten in the sink.

Time. That was all, the whole ballgame. Time for the vividness to pale, for Dean's chest to stop tightening up every time he saw Sam. Perspective had to return, Dean's sense of himself in relation to Sam in relation to the universe. It couldn't really be as epic as it felt, not as earth-shattering. It wasn't the brothers Winchester against the world, living beyond the laws of man and God. They were just a pair of backwoods nobodies, living out every bad joke about rednecks, but Dean wasn't going to be the kind of man who fucked his brother.

Time was the only thing he prayed for anymore, time and the strength to endure it, but a couple weeks passed and nothing was better.

Dean worked the longest hours Bobby would allow him, until he started to see the cherry-top spiral of light every time he closed his eyes. He suffered a constant low-grade headache that pressed in at his temples like thumbs. He spent a lot of time at the firing range, his elbow bone-aching from recoil.

Sam was hustling outside of town, at firetrap trucker bars between here and Sturgis, out of Dean's jurisdiction. Dean got it through the grapevine, Sam buying rounds all night 'cause he'd shaken down a whole fuckin' road crew the night before, Sam living off of cake and pie and lemonade at the cafe, free coffee at the salvage yard, the peanuts and pretzels at the Spoke.

If they were talking at all, Dean woulda told him to knock it off. Sam was good, he'd always been good enough and thank god he'd grown up tall as hell and with shoulders like a building, but any three guys in one of those dives could probably put him in the hospital if they really put their minds to it. And god knew Sam was just the right amount of cocky to make people want to fuck up that pretty face of his.

Dean was mostly trying not to think about it.

The tension made the house very nearly unlivable when they were both there. Dean caught himself tuned to the slightest sounds through the wall, the clank of Sam in the kitchen or the give of the floorboards under the carpet as he came nearer.

It kept getting worse, and Dean started to long for the coming spring, when the weather would warm and the grass would come back and he would be able to get the hell out of the house and run around if it got too tough to breathe.

But April was still a long ways off and in the meantime, Sam snapped.

Dean was just home from work even though it was past midnight, making some dinner all alone in the house. He moved slow, his side sore and bound to bruise by morning. Someone had actually been rustling cattle up at Caleb's ranch, and Dean had almost caught him clean, chased his dirty red shirt across the pastures and into the thickening brush, into the woods where Dean tripped and flew a good three feet before his trajectory was curtailed abruptly by a tree.

Dean was frustrated, nagged by the pain in his side and the silence around him. He banged plates and pots around as he cleaned up half-assed, thinking that he needed to get a dog.

The front door creaked, slammed. Dean cocked his head, listening for it, and there: thump thump, Sam's boots removed. Dean left the water running in the sink, over the mess of dirty dishes, rinsing his hands repeatedly because it gave him something to do.

Sam appeared in the doorway, rested both hands on the frame and took up all the space in between.

"Dean," he said, and it scraped up Dean's spine. Sam had never said his name like that before.

"You, uh." Dean glanced at him, looked quickly away. Black-eyed drunk, pupils swollen and Sam licked his lips, staring at Dean. "You. Want something to eat?"

Unimaginably dumb thing to say, and Dean cursed inwardly as Sam smirked, pushed off the doorframe and came to him. Two weeks since Sam had been this close to him, since Sam had spoken to him like he meant it. Two weeks and a kamikaze light burning in Sam's eyes, worse than the drunk that reeked off him, and Dean thought that Sam would do this or die trying. He barely got the faucet snapped off before Sam had hold of his shoulders and was driving him into the wall.

Dean's back hit with a thud, a low moan squeezed out of him as his sore side hollered, his heart rattling and his wet hands in fists pressed to Sam's chest. His elbows were locked, keeping Sam from closing the last few inches and holding Dean down with his body.

"You know what I want," Sam said, so calm and dark, hooded gaze intent on Dean's face.

"Sam. Sam."

Sam ducked, trying to kiss him, and Dean yanked his head away in a panic, uncurled one hand and pressed it flat to the base of Sam's throat, holding him off. Sam made a noise, a growl that spurred along Dean's edges, and tightened his grip on Dean's shoulders so Dean couldn't get away.

"You're drunk," Dean said, fighting a stammer, his throat slowly closing up. "You, Sammy, you said you wouldn't anymore."

Sam's face twisted, teeth against his lip. He slid his hand suddenly under Dean's collar, rough fingertips on Dean's collarbone and Dean couldn't hold in his gasp. Sam pushed his whole hand into Dean's shirt, palmed his bare shoulder as Dean shook quietly.

"Can't help it," Sam mumbled, low and shamed. "Can't sleep for thinkin' about it. Can't even breathe right anymore, Dean, please."

The _please_ almost did it. That and the thunder of Sam's pulse under Dean's hand, the open plea scrawled all over his face doing unwarranted things to Dean, making his vision fog. Dean shifted his grip and took hold of the back of Sam's neck, hand half-buried in Sam's hair to draw his brother to him and Sam's eyes went wide as he breathed out, "yeah," hot and sweet against Dean's mouth, and somehow Dean tore away.

Broke Sam's hold on him and his on Sam, a wispy handful of Sam's hair in his palm and Sam hissing between his teeth. The collar of Dean's shirt ripped as Sam's hand came free. Dean shoved Sam hard to the side, his face feeling scalded, the thin skin over his shoulder blistered. His mind was a useless gibbering thing, his body overrun, dying for his brother.

"What are you doing--don't." Sam grabbed his arm and Dean flung him off, shot to the other side of the kitchen, where he clung to the edge of the table. "Why the fuck'd you _stop_?"

Dean pressed his fingers into his eyes, spare drops of water slicking down his cheeks and counterfeiting tears. He couldn't believe any of this was happening to him.

"You, you're my brother," Dean said, not understanding why the excuse sounded so feeble and weak. "I can't."

Sam grabbed him again, pulled his hands away from his face and wouldn't let Dean jerk away. Sam's hands braceleted around Dean's wrists, forcing him to look up. Sam's face was lit, fanatical.

"You can. You want to," Sam told him without any doubt.

Dean met his brother's eyes. "I won't."

Sam's mouth opened and fished for a moment, and then he said, voice stuttery, "You don't know what it's doing to me."

"I swear to god I do." A half-smiling sad look on his face, Dean turned his hands in Sam's grip, tapped at his wrists. "Lemme go, Sammy."

"No." Sam cuffed him too firm to move again. His eyes flashed. "Not lettin' you run away again, that's such bullshit."

"Sam-" Dean warned.

"_No_. I don' care what you say, this is what we got. It's not like it should be but it's here and it's ours and we can have it, I promise you we can."

He dragged at Dean, left one hand binding Dean's wrists and put the other on Dean's face, thumbing at his cheek, the edge of his nose. Sam was impossible, huge eyes begging at him, abused mouth on offer, this beautiful fucked up kid and Dean was dizzy, unbalanced, wanting him so bad.

"Lemme go, Sam, you gotta," Dean said, hating the hoarse note of panic in his voice. He felt like he'd been possessed, set to run on dark instincts not his own. He wanted to bite Sam's lip until it bled, let Sam pin his wrists above his head, hold him down.

Sam pressed his thumb against the corner of Dean's mouth. His throat clicked as he swallowed. "Don't know how," he admitted. "Dean, I'm gonna, you gotta let me-" and then Sam kissed him, deep with the brace of his thumb holding Dean's jaw.

Dean groaned against his will, cut off in his throat as Sam licked into his mouth. Dean kissed him back for a few mindless seconds, heady with the taste of liquor and Sam's tongue moving along his own, and then Sam let go of his wrists to cradle Dean's face in both hands. Dean sucked on Sam's lower lip, plastered his hands on the broad expanse of Sam's chest, felt the heat beating out of him. Dean whispered _sorry_ wordlessly into Sam's mouth, and pushed him away again, hard enough that Sam tripped and sprawled back on the floor.

He was smart this time, staggered out of the kitchen before Sam could catch his breath or regain his feet. Dean slammed down the hall, wracked by arousal and trembling so bad he didn't even attempt his boot laces, just jammed his feet in and grabbed his coat and got out. As the door closed, Dean could hear Sam, the wind knocked out of him, gasping his name, sounding like he was suffocating.

Dean got in his cruiser and took off in a spray of gravel. He rubbed at his mouth compulsively, licking at his teeth. Fire, Sam tasted like fire, although that was probably just the booze; he'd never get Sam sober enough to taste clean, and a bolt of jagged laughter broke from Dean, a wild little cackle.

Dean didn't know where to go, nowhere felt safe, but the car followed the familiar route to the Roadhouse and Dean figured it was as good as any other place and better than most.

There was a stool at the end of the bar, out of the worst of the light. Dean beelined for it, making grins for the locals who hailed him as he passed. He turned his coat collar up and hunched inside it. His hands were laced together on the scratched-soft bar so it wouldn't be evident how badly they wanted to shake.

Ellen materialized before him. "Usual, Dean?"

Dean inclined his head affirmatively. Beer in a bottle and a double-shot of top-shelf because Sam might love his gutter whiskey but Dean had standards. The drink laid his throat open like a switchblade going down. Dean blinked away tears, hand over his face.

"Look like you're havin' a rough night," Ellen remarked. She was wiping down already clean tumblers, just for something to do with her hands, Dean thought.

"There another kind?" Dean replied, muttering.

"You just get off duty?"

"Midnight."

"Now, I told Bobby not to let you take those swings anymore; that man ain't got the sense God gave a mule."

Dean smirked, rolling his beer between his palms. "You oughta lay off him, I'm the one volunteering for 'em."

"You," Ellen said with an emphatic finger point, "have never had the vaguest idea of what's good for you."

Dean snorted derisively, but he couldn't really argue it, keeping his eyes down. Ellen went down the bar to serve another patron and Dean thought he would appreciate the quiet, but his thoughts kept slingshotting back to Sam's mouth on his, his tough hands held careful around Dean's face. Dean was stricken, overwhelmed. His physical response to his brother had been so powerful, felt in his marrow and each individual blood vessel, and Dean couldn't understand how he'd let Sam get in that deep. He didn't know if he could realistically fight it.

He thought, _can't go home_, and his stomach bottomed out. He couldn't sleep with only a wall between them.

Dean sucked at his beer, slow terror growing in him. This had already fucked up _everything_. Fled from the only home he'd ever known because he couldn't look at Sam, never touch him again. He wasn't just Sam now, he was this terrible hopeless dream of Dean's, branded on memory as sinuous and wicked and hotter than anyone had the right to be, and Dean would never get rid of him like that, never forget.

His mouth felt like a bruise. The familiar scent and noise of the bar flowed around him, surreally normal background to Dean losing his mind. He brushed Ellen off when she came back to banter some more, thinking irrationally that it would be all over his face, clear as a scar.

He needed to pull himself the fuck together.

There was barely time, though. He was just finishing his second beer when the phone behind the bar trilled, high and insistent above the music. Dean watched Ellen pick it up, leaning it on her shoulder with her head cocked and her hands busy making a Colorado bulldog. Saw her say, "Yeah, hang on," and look up to make eye contact with him.

Dean had no premonition about it, no bad feeling. He was deep in the grip of a morose buzz, depressed and suggestible, and he couldn't think of anything anybody on the phone could say that could worsen his situation.

He came around to where the cord would reach, took the phone and pressed his free hand flat against his ear.

"Yeah, 's Dean."

"Get your ass to the station, boy, right fuckin' now."

Bobby. Voice all ragged and scraped and Dean's spine snapped a bit by reflex, shoulders straightening.

"What happened?"

"Just arrested your brother." Coughing on a laugh, Bobby was unable to believe it himself.

"_What?_"

"'fraid so. Real sorry 'bout that, but he's lucky I didn't shoot him."

Dean shook his head, pressing his hand tighter against his ear in the hopes that he was mishearing. He made eye contact with Ellen over the bar, taking in her worried, resigned expression. He felt a flash of anger, seeing no surprise in her face and knowing she'd expected this of Sam, her and Bobby and everybody else, just standing witness, waiting for Sam to complete his fall.

"What the fuck did he do?"

Another roughened laugh. "Took a baseball bat to my cruiser and the other'n. Right in the station parking lot, beat the holy shit out of two county vehicles, is what the fuck Sam did."

"Jesus _Christ_," Dean said, all his anger abruptly sliding over to Sam. "He thought I was there."

"Yeah, gathered that. Boy's 'bout as drunk as I ever seen but he's still got a lot to say about you."

Dean's blood ran dead cold. He saw it like a vision, detailed and vivid, Sam face-down on the ruined hood of a cruiser, arms handcuffed behind his back and his mouth spitting and snarling, crying to the whole world how his big brother wouldn't fuck him. It would be the end of life as Dean knew it.

"Like what?" he managed to ask Bobby, keeping the anger in his voice to hide all the other stuff.

"Hell, runt, I dunno, he's drunk. He was shoutin' something about the Impala, something about Lawrence, couldn't make that shit out. Shouldn't you be on your way right about now?"

Dean hung up on him, which Bobby could only have expected. He fumbled for his wallet, but Ellen said, "God's sake, son, _go_," and so he went.

It wasn't five minutes from the Roadhouse to the station, not with the lights and siren going and the town stepping aside to make a path for him. Dean punched at the steering wheel, cursing Sam even as he knew it was his own goddamn fault. Leaving Sam like that with no air in his lungs and the remembered feel of Dean's tongue in his mouth, leaving Sam drunk and defenseless against the demons that clamored and sang inside them both--Dean knew his brother too well, knew just what he'd looked like with the bat in his hands and broken glass sparkling all around him. This was one of hundreds of anticipated ends.

The little parking lot was crowded: the Impala and Bobby's Chevelle and Mattias's tow truck and both damaged cruisers and the maintenance truck tucked away in the corner. Dean parked on the street and jogged over, eyes fast over the wreckage.

Dents were scattered all over the cruisers, iron-fisted jabs, and the crushed side mirrors were hanging by wires or exploded clear off the door. Each windshield was starburst in several places. The cherry-tops had been shattered, shards of blue and red plastic all over the hoods.

"Motherfuck," Dean said almost conversationally. Mattias popped his head out of the tow truck's cab.

"That you, Deano?"

Dean raised a hand, not taking his eyes off the cruisers. "Howdy, Matt." He felt transfixed, suddenly not ready to see his brother behind bars.

Hopping down from the cab, Mattias came over, stood beside him. "Helluva thing."

Dean nodded, didn't answer. Mattias hawked and spat to the side. "You know what got him so riled?"

Dean laughed quiet, without joy. "Nothing new."

"Yeah. Don't rain but it pours, huh." Mattias had always been prone to platitudes and sampler mottos.

"You seen him?" Dean asked. His hands were in fists in his coat pockets, the wind sneaking icily into the tear in his shirt collar.

"Naw, sheriff'd already thrown him in stir. Heard him, though. Cursing, shouting your name out the window."

Dean started. "My name?"

Mattias nodded, restlessly clearing his throat. "Guess he thought you'd come spring him." He gave Dean a little smile. "Guess you did."

Dean coughed, hiding his mouth with his hand. He pressed his knuckles into his chin, his chest aching at the image of Sam's hands pushing through prison bars, Sam's voice calling out for him.

He clapped Mattias's shoulder and went inside, squinting against the sudden light.

Bobby was ripping the rookie a new one (the kid had been distressingly ineffective in subduing Sam in any way before Bobby'd got there), but he stopped short when he saw Dean. Bobby was out of uniform but still carried all the authority of his office, hard-eyed and commanding.

"Sergeant Winchester," Bobby said like he'd never held Dean upside down by his ankles. "Good of you to join us."

Dean hung up his coat, ran a hand through his hair. He glanced at the doorway to the three-cell block, but the angle on the long rectangular window wasn't such that he could see Sam.

"He sobered up yet?"

"Doubt it. Here." Bobby tossed a fifth of Beam across the desk, about a third full and glimmering amber. Dean caught it by reflex. "Took that off him."

"What are the charges?" Dean wanted to take a drink of the Beam like he wanted his next breath of air. Bobby would go nuclear, though, so he stowed it away in a drawer, out of sight.

"Malicious property damage, disturbing the peace, public intoxication, resisting arrest. I'll probably think up a couple more by morning."

"Bobby-" Dean started to say, then glanced at the rookie and his scanning beady eyes. "Sheriff, can I get a word?"

He inclined his head towards Bobby's office and Bobby followed him willingly enough, scowl etched permanently on his face. Dean closed the door behind him and as he turned to face Bobby, he was struggling against a tide of inappropriate laughter, shock and fear gaslighting him a bit. Sam had _kissed_ him. Sam had kissed him and then gone completely batshit nuts.

"Listen, you can't come down that hard," Dean said, trying to keep a straight face. "You know what he's gone through."

Bobby scoffed, though his hunched eyebrows gave a little, barest trace of sympathy. "It's been almost a year, Dean, 'cept when you look at him, it's like it just happened. Nobody expects him to be over it and nobody expects him to be fuckin' _cheerful_, but he can't get away with this shit either."

"It's not. It wasn't all his fault," Dean said haltingly. "Tonight, I mean. I. I made him mad. Knew he was drunk and pissed him off real bad, then I went to the bar, just left him. He came here looking for me."

"No, he came here looking for your car. 's not like he came in asking for you before he started fuckin' batting practice."

Dean flicked a hand, frustrated. "It was 'cause of me, Bobby, okay? I pushed him."

"Jesus Christ." Bobby fell back in his chair, exasperated. "You never cease to fuckin' amaze."

"What?" Dean's face was hot, arms crossed over his chest defensively.

"There's nothing Sam can do that's bad enough. It's never his fault while you're around."

Dean's voice rose a little. "I'm supposed to look out for him."

"He's twenty-four years old." Bobby's rose more. "And the help he needs he can't get from you. He's sick, Dean, you know that."

His shoulders jolted, his head snagging briefly. He wondered if he should tell Bobby, _we're both sick_.

"You really wanna watch this happening again?" Bobby asked, lower but still strong, undeniable. "Because I goddamn well can_not_. Not one of you boys."

Struck Dean like a blow, pushed him back against the door and he slumped, blinking at Bobby in a kind of stymied daze. There was a difference, he thought, between knowing somebody loved you in the theoretical, as an abstract, and something like this. Bobby'd been a widower as long as Dean had known him, a one-true-love kind of guy who'd never tried again, and instead of family he had the Winchesters, which was essentially the same thing.

"You're right," Dean managed, voice small. "Know you're right, Bobby."

Bobby blew out a breath. He scratched at his beard, looking away from Dean and out the window with a distant gaze. He looked tired, everybody looked so tired all the time. Dean thought it must have something to do with the winter.

"'s late," Bobby said after a minute. "You gonna talk to him?"

Dean nodded. "Hopefully stay shy of police brutality."

"Think there's a pain-in-the-ass little brother clause in there somewhere." Bobby creaked his chair thoughtfully. "We're comin' up with a plan on Monday. Deal with this shit proper."

"He won't like that. Us conspiring."

"Oh no, the felonious vandal will be upset with us! Gimme a damn break."

Dean rolled his eyes. "You set bail?"

That cleared Bobby's face, and he gave Dean a shrewd look. "Maybe some time in would be good for him."

"Uh, _no_." Dean lifted his eyebrows. "Leave him in jail, are you senile?"

"Watch it," Bobby snapped, but Dean smirked, his distress complete enough to be somewhat freeing. "Anyway, I don't trust him. He's a runner."

"He lives with a cop."

"Fat lot a good that's done him."

Direct hit, Dean rendered speechless for a moment before he recovered himself. "Look, I'll vouch for him, okay, my word on it."

Bobby sighed, rolled his eyes heavenward. Dean suffered a brief shock: his dad used to do the exact same thing.

"No special favors," Bobby conceded gruffly. "You pay the full bail, no half-now half-later."

"Sir yes sir." Dean moved back from the door, rested one hand on the knob. "I'ma go see him now."

"I'ma go home and go back to sleep," Bobby answered. "Goddamn Winchesters."

Dean grinned, blew Bobby a kiss. They were who they were.

In the bullpen, Dean ordered the rookie, "Stay the fuck away from the cell block. Whatever you hear or think's going on, you stick to that desk, hear me?"

The kid nodded, wide-eyed, and Dean knew he was expecting Dean to go kick the shit out of Sam, which wasn't wholly unwarranted but Dean knew better than to hit anybody in custody, pain-in-the-ass little brother or not. He didn't know what exactly was gonna happen back in the cell block, but he was pretty confident they wouldn't want an audience.

Dean went back, closed the door carefully behind him so that there was barely a click. Sam was in the middle cell, lying on the lower bunk with one leg kicked out. He had a hand pushed under his shirt and Dean could see a ribbon of skin.

Sam didn't lift his head, saying to the top bunk, "Took you long enough."

Dean came closer, his hands clenching in and out of fists. "I could kill you."

"You won't, though."

"Don't be too sure." Dean entertained it for a second, hitting Sam until he was unrecognizable, until he stopped moving. He thought he would throw up, reeled by the giddy embrace of the moment.

"What the fuck were you thinking, Sam?"

Sam's mouth thinned. His eyes were open, staring up. "Wasn't."

"Thousands of dollars it's gonna cost and Bobby, you mighta lost him for good with this stunt. I can't, can't fix this for you."

"Nobody asked you," Sam muttered. Dean made a harsh sound of disbelief, his lip curling.

"You just committed a felony to get my attention, Sammy, don't go playing hard to get now."

That got Sam up, swinging both legs onto the floor and reaching above him to grip the upper bunk. He glared at Dean, an incendiary look that sent a shiver through him.

"Don' make a fuckin' joke," Sam said without slurring too badly. "It's not a fuckin' joke."

"No, you're goddamn right about that." Dean stepped right up to the bars, his heart racing. "It's not funny at all, it's fucking terrifying."

Sam's eyes widened, his mouth open but nothing coming out. Dean saw the long muscle in his arm flex as he gripped the bunk, and Dean's fingers twitched in sympathy, wanting to feel the movements under Sam's skin.

"You scared of me, Dean?" Sam asked, his voice strangely breathless.

Dean bit the inside of his lip, eyeing his brother. It wasn't really Sam, not the mayhem that shadowed him or the truncated line where his morality stopped short, because Sam had always been like that and Dean had always been one of the few people that Sam would only ever hurt accidentally. But what Sam did to Dean, that scared him. The ease with which Sam had fundamentally altered Dean, that was downright chilling.

"_For_ you," he said, only half-lying. "Scared you're gonna get locked up or killed or god knows. You can't keep this up."

Sam pulled himself to his feet. He came slowly towards Dean and Dean's hands clenched on the cell bars, knuckles going pale.

"You shouldn't have run away," Sam said. He looked nervous, determined, still awful drunk.

Dean cut his eyes away, swallowing. He knew he should back up; it was basic protocol and common sense to stay beyond arm's reach of the prisoner. Sam had him frozen, pinned.

"That's no excuse for what you did, Sam," he said unevenly.

"Kinda is." Sam was right on the other side of the bars now, his big hands closing just above each of Dean's. "You make me crazy. It's not a figure of speech."

Eyes cast down, Dean shook his head, squeezing the cold iron in his hands. His mind was disjointed and frenzied, tossing him slivers and fragments and nothing at all helpful. He could feel Sam through the bars. They were half a foot apart.

"Shoulda hit me instead of the cruisers, then," Dean mumbled. Sam let go of the bar, lifted his hand and stroked Dean's cheek. Dean gasped, jerked his head away and Sam's hand fell.

"Sorta invested in your face," Sam answered hoarsely. Dean shut his eyes, the reins of control slipping in his grip. "Dean, you, you can't keep fightin' it. It's bound to happen, man, can't you feel that?"

Dean made a choked sound. Sam's fingers brushed down the ridges of Dean's knuckles, and Dean trembled and Sam saw it, Sam breathed out Dean's name. Dean wrenched his hands off the bars, took two big steps backwards and almost stumbled. Sam reached for him, long arms sliding through the bars and Sam's face behind them, stripped and tortured and begging, tearing Dean down.

"Don't, not again," Sam said, eyes blazing. "You get back over here Dean, you fuckin' _hurry_."

"Jesus," Dean said under his breath, socked full in the stomach by a wave of lust as visceral as a gunshot wound. He shuddered, half-bent over, and it didn't pass; he couldn't work around it.

"Please, Dean," and Sam's hand was open, pushed as far through the bars as he could get it, and Sam was saying _please_. Dean felt something give inside him, a guardrail splintering and he was over the edge, snatched by gravity, falling.

Dean moved over to the door and Sam cried, "No," and Dean snapped, "Pull your goddamn arms in," and Sam saw that Dean was fumbling to get his key into the cell door mechanism. Sam went quiet, his breathing harsh, and Dean twisted his wrist, all three cell doors ratcheting back.

He dropped the keys on the floor, the ring high and sharp in his ears. Strode across the block and stepped into Sam's cell, watching with amazement as Sam's eyes blackened in swift degrees. Dean took hold of the front of Sam's shirt and walked him backwards and Sam didn't fight, his hands hooked on Dean's arms, staring at Dean's face like there was nothing else in the world.

Sam hit the wall solid and Dean pressed his body against his brother's, both of them moaning low at the feel. Their belt buckles clinked together. Sam tossed his head back and slid his arms around Dean's shoulders. Heat shot up his spine like a plume, and Dean palmed Sam's hips, looking down to watch them grinding together, and then up at his long bare neck, his fallen-open mouth.

"This what you want?" Dean whispered under the line of Sam's jaw, licked away some salt. "This what you been looking for, Sammy?" He pushed his leg between Sam's, took his mouth away and blinked at the damp red mark he'd left on Sam's skin.

Sam rocked down hard, halfway there already. "Yes," he hissed, stretching it out.

Dean pushed his hands up under Sam's shirt, onto the smooth hot run of his sides, the concrete structure of him finally made tangible. Sam lowered his head and bit at Dean's mouth, fierce graceless kisses that dazed Dean better than right crosses. Sam hooked both hands in the rip at the shoulder of Dean's shirt, and tore it off him, strong enough to leave pale fabric burns on Dean's arms, but he couldn't begin to care because nothing more arousing had ever happened to him.

"Holy god," Dean said faintly. His shirt hung in tatters; Sam gave him a shaky grin, slid his hands down Dean's chest.

"See, Dean, I told ya," Sam mumbled, pressing his open mouth to Dean's shoulders. He rode Dean's thigh with these tight lazy snaps of his hips, and Dean's mind whited out every time.

"Don't--don't be a smartass." Dean brought his hands up, buried them in Sam's hair and kissed him deeply. Silver stars detonated across the backs of his eyelids and he would pass out in another second but Dean didn't want to stop.

Sam broke away, panting, wide-palmed hands anxiously painting heat across Dean's body, pure ache when he touched the rising contusions on Dean's left side. He showed a wild, overjoyed smile, eyes scrunching up, _Sam_, still Sam beyond any question, making Dean's heart wrench sideways.

"What." Dean swallowed, chickened out and hid his face in Sam's throat, asked muffled, "What should I do?"

Sam made an unbelievable noise, choked groan that Dean could feel reverberating under his skin. His hands clutched on the back of Dean's neck, Sam set his teeth to Dean's ear and Dean kinda short-circuited, rubbed against him fast and rhythmless, and they were both fully hard now and the friction was making them stupid, desperate. Sam was fucking _everywhere_.

"Anything," he managed to answer, voice like pitch and hot right against Dean's ear. "God, anything, I'll fuckin' love it I swear."

"Sweet _fuck_," Dean snarled, drew Sam's head back and kissed him dirtily, vicious. "Shut your mouth before you kill me."

Sam's mouth opened because he was still a brat and had been put on the earth to drive Dean insane, and Dean didn't think, pushing his fingers between Sam's lips to keep him quiet. An expression of surprise opened Sam's face, and his tongue curled around Dean's fingertips curiously, then sucked him in.

"Fuck," Dean said again, sounding distant to his own ears. He stared at his fingers sliding in and out of Sam's mouth, Sam's eyes barely open, slitted because he was getting off on it so bad. "Sammy, you, oh Jesus Christ, okay, okay."

His free hand scrambled for Sam's belt buckle, jerking it open one-handed and Sam hissed around his fingers, his teeth bared and biting and Dean's eyes rolled back in his head. He left Sam's fly for a moment to press the heel of his hand against his own, about to mess his shorts like a fucking kid, and he hauled in a few breaths. He could already smell them both in the air.

He slumped against Sam, felt how their hearts slammed against each other, and bit Sam's neck, pushed his hand into Sam's shorts. Sam moaned and Dean felt it as much as heard it, shivering up from his fingers wet and dragging into Sam's mouth. Dean curled the fingers of his other hand and thought for a second about how that was his brother's cock and this was such a strange place to find himself, but he stroked a few times and Sam, Sam whined and bucked up and it was kinda like the world ended inside Dean's head.

He slid down the length of Sam, fingers escaping Sam's mouth and icing down his neck, tripping damp over his shirt. Never done this before, never even thought about it, but Dean went to his knees like his body was only meant to fold in one way.

Sam actually twitched in his hand, scalding and getting slick, and Dean's mouth was already open from panting. Sam's huge hands cupped around his head, his thumbs on Dean's cheeks and his fingers woven through his hair, and Dean thought, _really gonna do this, meant for it_, and he licked his lips.

"God a'mighty." Dean looked up and Sam was staring at him, his eyes searing and burnt-looking. His voice sounded crippled. "If that ain't the prettiest thing I have ever seen."

Dean's mouth curved, flushes breaking over him in waves. He twisted his fist up Sam's dick and Sam's head fell back, his mouth shuddering open.

"Sweet talker," Dean said before lowering his head.

Dean didn't know what he was doing but it didn't matter. Everything he tried made Sam shiver and sweat and keen. Sam figured out how much Dean could take and started rolling his hips, shallow thrusts with his hands secured around Dean's head, his thumbs swiping at the corners of his mouth. Dean let Sam ride him, taken aback by how much it turned him on, having Sam over him like this, _in_ him. He dug his fingers into Sam's sides and Sam was babbling, "Oh you beautiful fuck don't stop, Dean, never fuckin' stop," and all Dean could think was _okay yes never will_.

Dean came with Sam's cock in his mouth and his own hand shoved down the front of his pants. Sam had the gall to gasp out a laugh at that, but Dean was too distracted to properly retaliate. He could barely even _breathe_. And anyway, Sam followed right behind him, stammering Dean's name and bowing down over his head. His fingers fluttered and clenched, scrabbling at Dean's ears.

The aftermath was momentarily quiet. Dean sat back on his heels, his knees apart and one hand sticky still buried in his shorts. He was breathing hard and rough and staring up at his brother, letting the picture they formed seep into him, carve across his memory. Half-naked in his shredded shirt, his mouth used and sore, Dean peeled his hand off Sam's hip, lost contact with him entirely.

Sam slowly tucked himself away, moving as if in a trance. His face was slack, sated, a whole gallery of expressions that Dean had never seen before. This was what Sam looked like directly after getting head, hazy and lax and breathing contentment. This was all new for Dean.

Sam gave him a slow look. Little sparks ran across Dean's skin, shivering down the back of his neck. A shallow smile bent Sam's mouth, and he offered Dean a hand up. Not certain his legs would hold him, Dean took it.

They stood too close, Sam steadying him. Dean's eyes flicked from Sam's heavy eyes to his mouth to the darkening marks on his throat, wondering if there was something he was supposed to say.

"You're," Sam said, breaking the quiet and then struggling, falling silent before continuing, "Better than I thought."

Dean caught his smile before it could show. He chewed on the inside of his cheek instead, feeling like his eyes were gaping, stunned. He wanted to touch Sam's face, his swollen mouth. Wanted to take Sam home and strip him bare, lay him out in Dean's bed and try it all again. He wanted weeks of Sam, seasons and years.

"I." Dean's voice barely worked, scraped raw, and he cleared his throat. "I gotta leave you here tonight. Take me a minute to get the bail together."

Sam nodded, his eyes following Dean's smallest movements. "Wore me out, anyway."

Dean's face heated, and he looked down, mumbling, "Yeah."

"Hey." Sam's hand alit under his chin, drawing his face up. "Did good, Dean, you an' me. Perfect."

Dean blinked fast, dismantled and unguarded and not prepared for the tectonic shift Sam caused, saying something like that. Sam smiling at him all loose and soft made impossible ideas run riot in Dean's head, like doors being thrown open to reveal sunlit rooms. Sam was making him light-headed, and Dean patted him on the chest, pulled Sam's hand away from his face. He took a step back. He took a breath.

He wore Sam's coat out of the cell block, zipped up over his bare chest. The rookie fish-mouthed at him and wanted to ask, but Dean shut him up with a glare. He escaped into the parking lot, where the cold air stung his flushed cheeks and the stars spun overhead.

Glancing back once, Dean scanned the high barred windows of the cell block, imagining Sam's long body pressed flat to the wall with his arm stretched up, his pallid waving fingers just barely visible in the moonlight. The middle window was empty, but the picture followed Dean all the way home.

(break)

Ellen had a little money for Dean to borrow, though she was of Bobby's opinion that a stretch might do Sam more good than harm. Dean worked on her, big sad eyes that had always been gold when he was a kid. She'd gotten wise years ago but sometimes still faltered, and Dean didn't feel too guilty playing on her sympathies, letting his voice crack. This whole leave-Sam-in-prison thing was pissing him off something awful.

Dean cleaned out his meager savings and he was still shy of the bail, so he leadfooted to Sturgis and pawned his watch and a watch of his dad's and the radio he used to listen to baseball games on while washing the Impala. It came out just enough, and Dean had this weird feeling of going to purchase his brother, laying money down and having Sam brought to him.

Clear-skied day, a windless mountain chill in the air, and Dean drove the Impala, going seventy on the backcountry highways with his window down and the stereo up just because he could. It matched with the ineffable feeling he'd had in his chest all day, this amorphous sensation of having been thrown aloft.

He got back by lunchtime, picked up some sandwiches from Mikey at the cafe, and went inside the police station, Sam's coat folded over his arm. Discomfort crawled through him, realized belatedly that he was pretty badly nervous. Bobby wasn't on shift, which was good; he would try to bust Sam down and Sam would lash out in response and Dean wasn't up for it. He hadn't gotten any sleep.

Dean bullshitted with the other sergeant for a minute, trying to regain his bearings, but he felt a second behind the conversation, his eyes hopping compulsively to the cell block door.

Dean had been trying not to think about it too much. He'd been kept up all night because every time he lay down the whole scene came crashing back in on him, on his knees on the stone floor with Sam braced against the wall. Sam's hands on his head, his face, and Sam cursing at him in that midnight voice, Sam's hips locked in Dean's grip, rolling so smooth. Every time he closed his eyes, there was Sam, and Dean didn't like that, didn't like that it was a compulsion and something he had no authority over.

Just going down on Sam was more than fucked up enough for Dean; he really didn't need to be obsessed with it, too.

Dean paid Sam's bail and the sergeant fetched the paper grocery bag with Sam's effects in it: battered brown leather wallet he'd had since he was thirteen, bottle opener in the shape of a cow skull, the slim miniature leatherman he was never without, six pennies and his lucky JFK half-dollar, a seven of spades that had been ripped in half, and a cocktail napkin with a cryptic message scrawled in Sam's hand, _meet me five minutes ago_, that Dean puzzled over, tried to conjure an explanation for.

"Quit messin' with my stuff," Sam said.

The napkin slipped out of Dean's hand, his fingers gone suddenly nerveless. He watched it flutter down to the floor dumbly, and then looked up. Sam was pocketing his wallet and gear, his clothes rumpled from being slept in and his hair snarled and his eyes trailing over Dean.

Dean grabbed the napkin off the floor, handed it to Sam and Sam glanced at it without interest, balled it up and flicked it into a bin. There was a bite mark on Sam's neck, a brother for the one Dean had found on his collarbone in the shower this morning. Dean wondered if Sam's skin tasted any different where it had been bruised.

"You all right?" Dean asked eventually, feeling like it was the expected thing.

Sam shrugged. "That bunk's cruel and unusual." He cracked his neck to the side, demonstrating.

"Save it for the judge."

"Did you bring me food? They said it was oatmeal for breakfast but it looked more like horse puke."

Dean made a disgusted face, nose scrunching, and Sam grinned. Dean grinned back by reflex, forgetting for a moment that they were in the station and Sam had gotten himself arrested and Dean was supposed to be mad at him.

"Here." Dean handed Sam his sandwich and Sam made pleased noises, tearing into the paper. Dean watched him, thinking kinda hysterically, _hey dude remember when i sucked you off last night._

Dean checked the shift board and left Bobby a note that was mostly insults couched around an oblique expression of gratitude for letting Dean bail out his brother. Sam was waiting for him at the door, munching on his sandwich and losing shreds of lettuce out the side. He snatched at the Impala keys but Dean said hell no, pushed him around to the shotgun side.

Driving was good, driving gave him something to do with his hands and somewhere to put his eyes that wasn't on Sam. Hot air blasted out of the dash and Sam held his hands in front of the vents as he would a fire, turning them to warm both sides.

"Cold in jail, too," he remarked.

Dean gave him a sidelong look. "It's not supposed to be a pleasant experience, you know."

"Just sayin', you stole my coat."

"You ripped my shirt," Dean answered without thinking, and was immediately blindsided by shock at the statement. Sam had ripped Dean's shirt off, in pursuit of having sex with him. This was the weirdest day ever.

It was also still really kinda hot, and Dean shifted in his seat, glancing over to confirm that Sam was smirking, looking smug. He was sprawled in the shotgun seat as he ever had, all legs and knees and arm stretched out along the seat. His whole body was angled towards Dean, his hips tipped.

"I was unduly provoked," Sam said, drawling and deep and Dean couldn't talk to him if he was gonna be using that voice.

They rode for a minute. Dean couldn't get over the oddity of the situation, the tension that packed the car like there was a hitchhiker in the backseat getting crazier with every mile. Everything he thought of saying seemed to have a double meaning. Everything was in goddamn code.

"You're gettin' a job, by the way," Dean settled on. "We're gonna do everything possible to keep you out of _actual_ prison, and first on that list is covering the damage."

Sam snorted, looking at Dean almost constantly. "_I'll_ fix the damn cars. Kept tryin' to tell Bobby that last night but did he wanna listen?"

"Yeah, I'm sure you were making a real intelligent argument. And I don't think you're fully appreciating how fuckin' psycho you went last night. I don't know if it's salvageable."

Sam lifted his hand and waved it dismissively, making a pfft sound. "We got different definitions of that, you an' me. On accounta my being way better with cars than you are."

"Dude." Dean might take a lot of Sam's shit, but there were lines. "I'm turning around and taking you back to jail."

"Dude!"

Sam was laughing. His goofy too-loud laugh, face all squinted against the sheer winter sunlight, and Dean thought they could go through their regular back-and-forth, feign the rhythm of being brothers, but at the end of the day he was still gonna want to bend Sam over the arm of the couch. For the rest of his _life_, he thought, stricken.

"Oh, and," Sam said, still turned towards Dean like a clear offer. "'Cause I'll forget later, thanks. Bailing me out an' all." He bounced his fist on Dean's shoulder, left it close on the back of the seat. "I got me the best big brother in the state."

Dean half-smiled without looking at him, all his focus dedicated to the road. His ears were burning, felt fire-truck red. Sick and dizzy and he thought it was shame but he couldn't tell anymore. Something about Sam saying _brother_ happy and rough like that, and the coil of heat when Dean heard it, this terrible feeling he had that Sam being his brother was actually the basis for the whole attraction, that it was _because of_, not _in spite of_.

There were levels to this thing, Dean was realizing. It went deeper, further back than he could have possibly anticipated. It was like he'd been living underwater, deaf and dumb and drowning and never knowing there was a dry and airfilled world just above the surface.

They got back home and Sam immediately went into the kitchen and retrieved a bottle of vodka from the freezer. He took out the orange juice and took down two plastic cups. Dean leaned in the doorway, still in his coat, watching uncertainly.

"One of those for me?" he asked. It wasn't as stupid a question as it sounded, considering who he was talking to.

Sam nodded, expertly fixing up two screwdrivers. "You're in need."

Dean thought about that, figured it was fair. The psycho-killer tension had followed them inside, making Dean's fingers itch at the doorframe. All alone in their quiet house, and Dean wanted to touch Sam and Sam wanted to get him drunk.

Sam came over to give him his drink, and maybe he was a little closer than he strictly had to be. That heat, whatever it was that Sam stored up inside him and bled out through every inch of his skin, Dean got the feel again, the sway of it. Sam dropped his eyes but it wasn't awkwardness this time, more like a ridiculously obvious cruise, up and down Dean's body before he smirked the smallest smirk possible and stepped away.

Situation being as it was, Dean felt lucky not to have lost hold on the drink. He made use of it, two big swallows and a gasp because mother of _god_ there was a lot of alcohol in that. Sam sat down at the table, working on his slower.

"So." Sam stretched it out, made it a dirty word somehow.

"What?"

Half a shrug, Sam leaning back and giving Dean a look that he couldn't read. "There was that thing that happened."

Dean stilled, his free hand hidden by his body and clutching at the doorframe. He thought for a frightened moment that Sam could see it all on his face, everything Dean wanted to do to him and how last night hadn't taken the pressure off in any way; Dean was still dying over here. It occurred to him almost immediately, though, that maybe Sam was the same way and it was bizarre, a strain of optimism so uncharacteristic for Dean.

"Yeah," Dean answered. It was as little as he could get away with. No point denying it when they both still carried the evidence.

"And you seem to be handling it very well."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Don't be fuckin' snide about it, asshole."

"No, Dean, fuck." Sam held his hands up, his face frustrated. "I was being sincere."

Studying him, nothing in Sam's expression showed a lie, and Dean sighed. "Sometimes it's hard to tell."

"Yeah." Sam scrubbed a hand over his face and through his hair. "Meant it, though. I didn't even. Wasn't sure I'd see you. I know you said you'd come, but I, I dunno."

"You thought I'd bug out and leave you in jail?" Dean was kinda offended.

"Well, no, not now. Full light of day and all that shit, I know you wouldn't really. Seemed plausible in my cell, you know?" Sam took a drink, measured and slow and Dean watched his throat. "But there you were. Even brought me a sandwich."

Dean looked away, shrugging that it was no big thing. He'd just figured Sam would be hungry because they were both usually hungry.

"So."

"You said that already," Dean said.

"Yeah, thanks, I was here." Sam glared at him mildly, heat in his eyes but no malice. "_So_, you didn't bug out, but are you gonna?"

Dean fidgeted, studying the sticky reddish place on the floor where Sam had lost a glob of jam off the knife while fixing toast a few weeks ago. He was trying to find an honest answer because Sam could usually tell when he was lying and the conversation would go quicker if he didn't get Sam mad.

"Probably not," he allowed. _not as long as blowjobs are still on the table_, he added silently, inwardly exasperated at how much his dick was running the show here.

Sam tapped his fingers on the table, looking speculative. "What about when it happens again?"

Keeping his face straight with the greatest of effort, Dean asked, "It's gonna?"

"Obviously, Dean."

Dean exhaled, astounded by how Sam could sound so matter-of-fact about it, like there wasn't even a debate to be had: yes, we will be adding incest to the daily schedule. We are that family now.

Somebody had to say something. "It's a bad idea, Sam."

"Obviously, Dean."

Dean scowled. "Shut up. I'm serious. You're all for it, like, no worries at all. Like there's no consequences to it. And that's just, it's so far removed from reality."

"What, Dean?" Sam's getting ticked, flicking his hair like a girl. "Tell me about some of these awful fuckin' consequences you got planned for us."

"It, it's wrong, and it's sick-"

"Those aren't _consequences_. That's just what other people would say, why would I give a shit about that?"

Shaking his head, Dean didn't know how to get it across, it seemed so clear. "It's what Bobby would say. It. It's what Dad would say."

Sam's lip curled up, pretty sneer that caught in Dean like a hook. His eyes were sea-dark and hard. "I'm suddenly supposed to start caring what he thinks _now_?"

"Sam-" Dean started, his anger righteous but insubstantial, and Sam rolled right over him.

"No, man, honestly. A consequence, some harm it's gonna do you or me, that's what I wanna hear from you. Because right now? Way things are? All I see it doing is making you a little less miserable and me a little less suicidal."

Dean was taken sharply aback by that, which was surely the intention. He wasn't stupid or blinded by affection, and he could see the death wish in Sam's behavior, but that was different from him saying it out loud, confessing it.

He moved past it forcibly, terrified of looking at it too closely. Leaning back, Dean pinned his hand between his body and the doorframe, gazing tiredly at Sam and letting all the nightmare scenarios play through his mind.

"Something's gonna go wrong," Dean said. "I don't know what. You'll probably be drunk when it happens. We'll get into some stupid fight and we'll take it too far. It'll be hard not to, once we start--everything's gonna mean more. Or it, it's gonna feel that way. Like I can never be all the way mad because I'll still want to fuck you in the middle of it, and that'll only piss me off more--like that. This stupid terrible fight we're gonna have, Sammy, it's gonna go on for days. Weeks. Digging at every little weak spot 'cause we'll know everything then, there won't, won't be anything I can't use against you. And it'll be awful, and we'll both hate it, but we won't know how to stop. And then I'll wake up one morning and you'll be gone. I'll come home after a double shift and all your shit will be cleaned out. You probably won't even leave a note."

Dean paused, took a long breath. Sam was statue-still, wide-eyed. Dean half-smiled, went on, "You can't break up with family, Sam. You're gonna try, though."

"You-" Sam stopped, his throat moving as he swallowed. He was rattled, Dean could tell, his hands curling on the table. Sam shook his head, tight and insistent. He'd only believe what he wanted. "You can't just assume that's how it'll go."

"Got some compelling evidence," Dean answered.

"You never think good stuff is gonna happen," Sam accused him. Dean had to laugh.

"Have I been given reason to? I mean, _ever_?"

Shaking his head again, Sam clenched his jaw, determination setting back in his eyes. "You act like we're cursed or something. Glass isn't just half empty, it's full of fuckin' arsenic."

Sam got to his feet, dark eyes snapping, and advanced on Dean. Dean was headlight-frozen in the door, fingers clutching the cup. Sam had a feral look on his face, a gibbering edge twisting his mouth.

"You're always sayin' there's no hope but listen to me." Sam got right up close, rested his hand on the frame above Dean's head. "Are you listening to me, Dean?"

Dean moved his head, a fraction of a nod. He felt nailed in place, held in the force field generated by Sam's body. Sam's mouth curved slightly, his eyes getting sad.

"I've never been able to keep any of the people I've loved," Sam told him. "You really think I'd let you go too?"

Dean blinked. A knot came free in his chest, sudden and smooth and he drew in a quick surprised breath. He stared up at his brother, Sam who had been totalled and rebuilt, Sam who had gone to hell and brought back new demons for them both, and Dean found it hard to fathom him. There was this kid he'd grown up alongside, tagging along and pestering Dean and crawling in his bed after nightmares and during thunderstorms, and Dean couldn't see any traces of him here, the sweet solemn boy who ran away for fun and had maybe never made it all the way home.

But this Sam, this new Sam angling his body close to Dean and brushing his mouth half an inch away from Dean's face, Dean would never understand him. The surety in Sam, his faith in the two of them, Dean could never hope to know that himself.

But he could fake it.

When Sam whispered, "C'mon, man, please," Dean pushed up and kissed him, taste of oranges exploding as he thought helplessly, _love of my goddamn life_.

(break)


	5. Chapter 5

It was later that Dean freaked out.

Sam was asleep; they'd both fallen asleep. Tripped and stumbled down the hallway, tied up in each other and banging off walls, Sam's mouth on the back of Dean's neck like the most obscene promise. They hit Dean's bed skidding, Sam shoving him down and following like his hands were glued to his brother. Dean scrambling up and Sam crawling after, eyes gone that true black and his mouth a wet slash saying all the things they were gonna do.

Hadn't gotten past shirts off, jeans open, shorts twisted down, hips flush rubbing skin to skin and necking like Dean hadn't done since he was about sixteen years old. His _brother_, Dean kept thinking, and nothing felt better than blood on blood. Everything just fucking _insane_, heat pounding in him until he couldn't think, catching glimpses of the bright sky outside the window and hardly recognizing the blue.

Sam passed out pretty much immediately after, rolling off Dean with a groan, hand covering himself. He was kinda laughing, neat and happy and amazed in a dim way, his eyes smoothed shut. Sam's squirming had snapped his shorts back into place, but his hand was still down there, lost to the wrist, and he fell asleep just like that, a smile on his face.

Dean had watched him for a few minutes. Sam always looked like a kid when he was asleep. His breathing got deeper and deeper; he hadn't lied about not being able to sleep on the prison bunk. Dean got up carefully and shucked his jeans, tugged Sam's the rest of the way off and Sam barely stirred, murmuring nonsensically and pushing his cheek into the pillow. Dean gently drew Sam's hand free of his shorts, left it to leave damp spots on his stomach, and then he had lain back down next to his brother, heads turned towards each other, and fallen asleep himself.

He'd dreamt of the car. Washing the car with a yellow sponge in the summertime, his dad drinking vodka and orange juice in the shade of one of the salvage yard wrecks, Sam on the roof of their house, slipping on the loose shingles, shouting down how Dean was doing it all wrong.

He woke up when it was still light outside, mid-afternoon and the sunlight across his chest was making him sweat even if it was thirty degrees outside. Dean woke up already panicking.

Sam was on his side, turned away from Dean, and with his back like a wall he seemed impossibly big. He'd wrangled his shirt off at some point, awake or semi-conscious, and the long muscles shifted as he breathed, shoulders looking carved out of stone.

It was just. Sam was in his _bed_. Dean's throat got tight, flattened like a straw that had been chewed on. His little brother, mostly naked and unnaturally warm, and Dean's palms were slick, making him think about what he could do, the yards of Sam he had yet to learn, and Dean was freaking out _so bad_.

He slipped out of bed and away, snatching his jeans and shirt to put on in the hallway. His hands were back to shaking, nothing like cooperative as he tried to do up his buttons. He abandoned the top two when he heard Sam cough-snore, jumping from nerves and hurrying to the living room.

Dean paced, ran his hands through his hair a few times before stopping short, sniffing his fingers, and promptly going to wash his hands and scrub a washcloth over his hair. He did it all in jerky motions, scraped the rough cloth over his face until the skin felt abraded and raw. The sun poured through the little window, same side of the house as his bedroom like Dean would never be able to escape it, and Dean blinked against the brightness, thinking dumbly about how it was Sunday.

And three times now, he'd fucked around with his brother.

Dean went into the kitchen, where his and Sam's drinks had been orphaned on the table, forgotten in their heady rush. He finished off both, that too-sharp orange taste back on his tongue. Kept thinking, _this is what sam tasted like_. Kept thinking about the three times he'd fucked around with his brother, and how it would happen again, it would _keep happening_, because Sam had figured out the magic word.

It seemed incredible. Dean had to go to work tomorrow, had to stop in the cafe for his egg sandwich and coffee and then jaw with Bobby and rag on the rookie and be a cop and all the while he'd be feeling Sam on him. Just standing here in the living room knowing what it felt like to suck Sam's dick was surreal and slowly undoing him, so Dean didn't know how he was going to maintain his whole outside life.

"One thing at a time," he muttered to himself.

He started washing the dirty dishes in the sink, just because they were there. Usually he and Sam engaged in a protracted battle of wills about the dishes, each only staying one plate ahead, whatever they needed for the next meal while leaving the rest to rot in the sink. Months this could go on before one of them snapped and couldn't take the smell anymore, the slow corpse-buzzing flies. Usually it was Sam.

But the routine of it appealed, the scalding water that bit at his fingertips and wrists, the chemical-lemon smell of the dish soap. Dean distracted himself trying to identify the meal from what was scraped off the plate, resolutely not freaking out anymore.

Floorboards creaked under carpet in the hallway. Dean's head came up, wolf-alert, and he listened as Sam padded into the bathroom, the tumbling sound of him clearing his throat. The shower sputtered on.

Dean rinsed the same bowl for five minutes. HIs hands were red and sore, a horizontal stripe of damp on his shirt where he leaned against the counter. He had to fight the urge to run, get out before Sam got out of the shower so that Dean wouldn't have to see his face.

But he was still there when Sam came in, thick wet-dark hair curling against his neck, wearing his Godzilla T-shirt and the jeans Dean had taken off him earlier. He was yawning, scratching at the back of his neck.

"Hey," Sam said, the word rounded. Dean echoed it, staring down at the bowl.

Sam opened the refrigerator, peered in without much interest and then straightened. Dean felt dangerously on edge, keeping watch on his brother out of the corner of his eye.

"Gonna watch a movie," Sam told him.

Dean nodded. "Which one?"

"_Exorcist_. Or _Rosemary's Baby_. Something about the devil." Sam stretched his arms out in front of him, fingers interlaced, and popped his elbows. "Seems like that kind of day."

Dean nodded again, feeling dull-tongued and incompetent, couldn't even handle a simple conversation. He cleared his throat a couple of times, not unaware that Sam was watching him, wishing he would just go watch his movie already.

"I think that bowl's as clean as it's getting, man."

Caught, Dean set the bowl on the rack and twisted off the tap. He glanced at his brother and Sam was smirking at him, expected but no less obnoxious for that.

"I, uh," Dean said, trying to cobble some banter together but he kept getting tripped up. Sam had his thumbs hooked his belt loops, fingers curled against denim, and his hands looked gigantic like that.

Sam grinned, cheerful and sharp. "Don't bother. Come watch the movie with me."

Dean shook his head, thinking absently that he couldn't, there was a good reason why he couldn't. He needed an hour or two away from Sam, away from the number Sam did on his brain, time enough for Dean to figure out how he was gonna do this.

Sam didn't care, though, rolled his eyes and grabbed a handful of Dean's shirt, tugging him into the living room and pushing him down on the couch.

"Stay," Sam instructed. Dean twitched, as tense as wire, but he did as Sam asked.

Sam crouched to dig in the big cardboard box where they kept their tapes. Dean studied the lines of his legs, the strong flared tendon running into his heel. Dean was still uncomfortable, even though Sam wasn't acting off and nothing was weird about any of this, lazy Sunday afternoon watching a movie they'd both seen six dozen times already. Nothing weird, and maybe that was what had Dean out of sorts, because his heart was still racing, and there was no reason for it at all.

Pushing the tape into the VCR, Sam sat on his heels, waiting for the red FBI warning screen to come before he got up and went into the kitchen and the fridge opened, rubbered closed. Sam came back and sat next to Dean, handing him a cold beer.

Not too close, no arm slung around Dean's shoulders. Sam was a couple feet away, bare feet up on the coffee table, bottle rolled slow on his thigh. This had all happened a thousand times before.

Dean's back was still stiff, hovering a half-inch off the couch. He was waiting for the hidden catch, the other shoe to drop. It didn't seem real that they could have clumsy teenaged sex and take a nap together and then just watch a movie like regular brothers killing time. These things couldn't co-exist.

Sam smacked him upside the head. "Quit it."

Dean hunched, scowling. "Didn't even say anything, fucker."

"Don't care. Just quit it." Sam took hold of his shoulder and Dean went still but Sam only wanted to give him a shake, quick and pointed. "I'll let you know when there's something you need to worry about."

Dean forced his shoulders to relax, sinking back. He huffed out a breath, not happy but not freaking out quite so badly. He watched the movie for awhile, the creepy little girl getting creepier and the sad-eyed priest casting about for the remnants of his faith. When the demon started spouting obscenities, Dean and Sam chimed in, directing hellish insults at each other. Sam was a motherfucking worthless cocksucker. Dean was faithless slime. Once Sam got him laughing, Dean had a hard time stopping.

And that was what it was like.

Nothing was different during the day. Sam was Dean's brother, and he doodled cartoons on the steamed-up bathroom mirror when he got bored brushing his teeth. He toed off his boots in the hallway without finesse and left hunks of muddy snow on the carpet. He went to the salvage yard every day like he was actually holding down a job again, but he only worked on the busted cruisers. He drank gallons of free lemonade from the cafe, bitter from the added vodka. He prowled around with his punkass friends, the Beckett twins, Jake and Ava and Lily, and kicked up trouble at the Spoke, came home late, drunker than when he left.

When Sam got home, when it was night outside, that was when the change showed, revealed by moonlight. Dean didn't wait up, but he was always awake the second the front door rattled. Lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, Dean listened to the creak and stumble of Sam making his way through the house and his heart started going hypersonic again, the fucked up synapses in his mind firing.

Dean never closed his door anymore. It rested against the jamb, hallway light limned neatly geometric, vulnerable to the slightest push. Sam's footsteps approached, and Dean heard him step over the one floorboard that whined particularly loud. Dean thought the anticipation would kill him, every single night.

Sam appeared, clicking the door shut behind him, and he wove, unsteady as a sea as he stripped off his shirts one at a time, three layers and then skin and all the while Sam's mouth running, Sam telling Dean about the people at the bar that night and the ongoing petty dramas of the town and saying, "You shoulda come out with us, 's more fun when you come out."

Dean just lay there, hands folded under his head and his elbows winged. Studiedly casual, his eyes slit and following Sam, nothing on his face to betray the apprehension that had yet to fade, the complicated mash of emotions that rollicked in him. Occasionally saying, "Yeah, Sammy, that's hilarious." Occasionally saying, "Any freakin' day now, Sam." Acting like normal, best he could.

And that lasted until Sam crawled over him, jeans open and tugged off his hips (Sam liked it when Dean finished the job for him). Sam with his elbows to either side of Dean's head, smiling down at him with that hateful drunk smile of his, and Dean wanted to bite it off his face. He couldn't play normal anymore, couldn't hide what Sam did to him.

Sam liked him like that, insensible and broke-open. He drove Dean crazy, hours at time, until Dean stopped worrying about saying something dumb, stopped worrying about what it meant when he wrapped his legs around Sam's waist.

Dean wanted to believe that they weren't brothers in the dark. There was no sign of it; they'd never looked much alike and past midnight Sam was just a rangy silhouette against the sheets, hair gnarled around Dean's fingers. Sloe-eyed, white flash of teeth as he groaned, a sound that Dean had never heard from his brother Sam.

It was stupid, though--irredeemably so. Dean never lost track of Sam. He never forgot exactly whose dick he had his hand on.

Divided world, the sheer light and sound of day contrasted with the drift and quiet of night, freezing cold out on the streets and insanely hot in bed with Sam, sweat slick and the corner of the sheet sticking to Dean's back when he rolled over. Dean was paranoid all the time, careful not to mention Sam's name to third parties because he was sure it would catch in his throat.

Dean went through the motions. He did his job and ate lunch with Bobby and smiled at girls he knew and counted the hours. Dean lived for nightfall, feeling vampiric and dying of thirst.

The first time he let Sam fuck him, Dean was panicking on the inside. He didn't understand what Sam was doing to his body, how he could have all these triggers and weaknesses without knowing it. Couldn't get his head around Sam's hand fit around his thigh, holding him open, and Sam's forehead dropped against his own, Sam's breath searing on Dean's mouth. Dean was blind from pleasure but that didn't do anything for the fear. This couldn't be his brother; Sam would never do this to him.

But Sam did, and afterwards as Dean lay there panting, he thought maybe that would be enough. They'd crossed every line, nowhere else for them to go. Maybe the memory of Sam when Sam had been in him like a second soul, maybe that was all Dean needed.

He held the thought, clung to it, and fell asleep next to his brother. Woke up in the night to Sam's mouth on his neck, Sam rolling him onto his side so carefully, and the idea of _enough_ blew like ash out of Dean's mind. Sam eventually fucked him in every room of the house except their father's. In the daytime, Dean was aghast at himself. But that was the daytime. That was a different Dean.

Sam came down from the salvage yard one afternoon and brought Dean a lemon square from the cafe, knocking on the glass of the station window and waving at him. They ate on the Impala's bumper, because Sam was antsy about going into the station, probably thought Bobby would sling him in lock-up for breathing wrong. Sam had a court date in three weeks, but remained stubbornly convinced that if he had both cruisers fixed by then, all charges would be dropped.

Sam with his cheeks and nose red in the cold, flyaway brown hair obscuring his eyes, and Dean watched him licking powdered sugar off his fingers. Sam's hip right up against his and it didn't look strange, they'd always stayed too close to one another.

Back in the station, Dean took his time hanging up his coat, looking out the front window at the Impala diminishing down the road. It was difficult to put into words the feeling of watching Sam drive away in Dean's old car.

He had some paperwork to finish but he could see Bobby tipped back in his chair, hands laced on his gut, gazing serenely at the ceiling, so he went back to bug him.

"You need a nap, old man?"

Bobby grunted, sparing him a withering look. Dean grinned back, pushing with his legs to make the chair rotate sixty degrees or so, back and forth. He was feeling wired, all of a sudden; the sugar in the lemon square, he assumed.

"Ain't I given you enough work to keep you busy?" Bobby asked, gruff but not really serious about it.

"I'm very good at my job, you know," Dean said. "I'm like Robo-Cop."

Bobby looked at him, nonplussed. "I don't know who that is." Dean started to explain, and he held up a hand. "Wasn't asking."

Dean sat back, feeling pretty good still. "Listen, if there's still nothing going on later, how'd you feel about me knocking off early to hit the firing range? Gettin' a little rusty."

Another grunt, this one vaguely affirmative. Dean pushed off and lifted his feet, let the chair complete a slow rotation. Bobby's office spun past, a panorama. There was a picture of Dean on the wall, the day he got his badge, Bobby's arm around his shoulders and corny grins on both their faces. There was a faceless shoulder in the side of the frame that Dean knew was Sam.

"Glad you came in, actually," Bobby said when Dean was facing him again. "Let's talk about your brother."

Dean was good, didn't react outwardly save for every muscle's slight tensing. There was a vibrant stab of adrenaline through the heart of him, immediate and overwhelming as a car crash. Bobby knew. Bobby _knew_.

"What about him?" Dean managed. He fought the urge to put his hand over a mark Sam had left on his neck--it was below his collar and he thought it'd be fine, he thought no one would see it.

Bobby sighed, world-weary. "Look, this ain't fun for me either. But Sam's out of control."

That was true; the whole goddamn thing had gotten out of control.

But Dean held his tongue, figured out what Bobby was talking about. Not the fucking his brother part, but instead every _other_ way in which Sam was fucked up.

"He's getting better, Bobby," Dean said.

"How's that, runt?"

"Hasn't been out past one all week." That was also true, but it probably had more to do with Dean not-waiting at home, and the thought sent an odd little thrill through him. He clamped it down, met Bobby's eyes. "Drinking less, not just at the bars but during the day too. Used to go through two sixers a day at our house, now I just have to buy one. He's back at the yard, doin' a hell of a job on those cruisers."

"He already _did_ a hell of a job on the cruisers."

"Yeah, and he's making his amends now. He knows he fucked up."

"Of course he _knows_." Bobby gave Dean a hard look. "He doesn't care, Dean, that's the problem."

"He does," Dean insisted. He thought he might be lying a little bit now. "He's trying to put it right."

"I think he's doing what he knows _you_ want him to do, and maybe it'll last a week if we're lucky."

"Come on, man." Dean slouched back, exasperated. "You know Sam, you know he's not a bad guy."

Bobby didn't answer. He held Dean's gaze, implacable and colored all wise and sad. Dean looked away first, swallowing fast. A picture came to him suddenly, Sam's hands last night against the pale skin of Dean's stomach, the fresh scrapes across his knuckles, the road rash on the heel of his palm, and Dean hadn't asked, hadn't wanted to threaten the delicate thing between them. Dean didn't want to think about that stuff anymore.

"Look," Dean said, his throat thick. "Just let me stay on him for now. He _is_ doing better, he's gonna be fine. We'll just, we'll see how this plays out, at least until he goes to court, and if something happens between then and now, we'll. We'll figure out something else."

Bobby shook his head, but the look on his face was resigned, not contrary. Dean's lungs unlocked a little, and he breathed in gingerly.

"All right," Bobby said, grudging. "I think he'll be back in here on a D and D before the weekend, though, and then it's on my terms, agreed?"

Dean's back went stiff. _Absolutely not_, he wanted to say. He wasn't gonna write a blank check on Sam's account, just let Bobby do whatever he thought was best. Dean would trust Bobby with his life, but not with his brother.

He gave Bobby a long, considering look, and inclined his head ever so slightly. He knew Bobby would take it as consent, but Dean had never actually said the word, a technicality but it was all he had.

Bobby sighed again. His face was seamed and scruffed and hung heavy with concern. "That boy's gonna be the death of you, Dean."

Dean worked out a smile, shrugged. What could you do? Sometimes people bound themselves to you before you were old enough to fight back. Sometimes you were only meant to fit against one other body in this world, and if that body drowned, down you went too. None of this surprised Dean in the least.

When he got home that night, hands smelling of gunpowder and ears still ringing, Sam was making macaroni and cheese. Dean changed out of his uniform and came back barefoot. Sam had a beer waiting for him on the table, cap cracked off already.

Nothing particularly interesting had happened to either of them since they had lemon squares a few hours before, so they shared a companionable silence. Dean drank his beer, watching how Sam's hair crinkled in the steam rising from the pot.

Sam reached for his own beer and Dean saw the scabs across his knuckles, his conversation with Bobby crashing back in on him. He studied Sam carefully, given the leisure now with him busy at the stove. Sam didn't look any more tired or fucked up than he usually did. Dean hadn't lied, Sam _had_ been drinking less, at least marginally, but he still carried a flask and still drank uninterrupted from the time he left the yard until when he crawled into Dean's bed. He'd been with Dean at the threes and fours in the morning that before would have found him face down in a parking lot somewhere.

"Hey, Sam?"

Sam looked back at him, something simple and soft in his expression. He didn't look damaged at all, at that moment. "Yeah?"

"You. You'd say you're doing okay, right?" Dean clenched his hands under the table, irritated with himself. Stupid question.

Sam looked a little surprised, uncertain smile tugging at his mouth. "You mean like, in the grand scheme of things?"

"Uh, sure. I guess." Pressing his fists into the table from underneath, Dean struggled to keep his face from warping. "I mean, okay considering. Are you doing okay considering that nobody could really expect you to be okay with all the shit you have to deal with. So, are you. Are you at least kinda okay? Considering?"

A blank stare followed by a short laugh, and then Sam turned to face him, laying the big spoon on a cheese-smeared plate. Sam leaned back against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. He gave Dean a slow dark look.

"Right now I am."

Dean nodded, foolish and relieved. It was all so idiotic. Sam was still drinking himself to death, still walking into bar fights holding fists against cue sticks and switchblades, still driving too fast everywhere he went, but right now. Right now he was okay, making dinner and sharing the room with his brother.

Dean took a long drink, let it slide down his throat icy and sharp. Sam's eyes followed the move of his Adam's apple, and Dean winked at him around the bottle, making Sam snort and grin.

_right now_, Dean thought again. _right now is what it would be like if things were okay. _

(break)

The call came in around midnight.

Dean was finishing a Hot Pocket, fingers shining with orangish grease, and he swiped them on his uniform shirt before reaching for the phone, hearing Bobby's rebuke in his head. The rookie was napping in the empty cell block; nothing at all had happened all night.

"Sheriff's department."

"Dean. Dean."

Ellen, but an unseen strain of her, her voice shaky and weak and making Dean's stomach turn sick-slow. He sat up, his boots thudding against the floor.

"What happened?"

"I, it's, it's Sam, Dean, he-" and Ellen became faint and Dean heard her cover something that sounded like a sob, the phone held away.

Terror, again, Dean's oldest friend. Like a flood, an earthquake with fault lines in his bones, trail of devastation left in its wake. Sam was on the floor of the Roadhouse with a knife sticking out of his eye, sawdust in his hair. Sam was dead from a shotgun blast in the side lot where the truckers parked, his whole chest blown open. Sam had passed out and been put in the back office and he'd choked on his own vomit. Sam had in some way or another stopped breathing.

Dean could see it so clearly, he could _smell_ it. Blood and beer and sawdust and sulfur, the gray tone of Sam's skin, the peaceful look on his face. More like a memory than a premonition, it was that real.

"What?" he managed, the phone too tight against his face. "He's, is he-"

Ellen must have heard it in his tone, cut him off before Dean had to ask and wait. "He's alive, he's, Jesus, he's fine, it's not him."

Dean made an inarticulate sound of pure relief. "Who is it, what happened?"

Ellen hid another horrible far-away sob. She came back hardly sounding human. "Sam killed Gordon Walker."

"No," Dean said automatically, sure that Ellen had that wrong.

"He, he stuck a broken bottle into Gordon's throat."

"_No_," Dean said more forcefully. There was no way in the world Sam had done that.

"God, Dean, the whole bar saw, I can't, I'm so sorry."

Dean got to his feet but then his legs gave out almost immediately and he fell back in his chair, hitting hard and making his teeth clack together painfully. There was this wild flicker in him like his heart had become a panicked bird, like it would fly up his throat and escape out his mouth and leave him hollow.

"Why did he do that?" he heard himself ask, plaintive as a child.

"I don't know, I wasn't. I wasn't close enough. They were arguing, they were by the juke arguing and then Gordon punched Sam and they were fighting and I hollered and they didn't stop so I sent a couple of the boys over to break it up, but before they got there, Sam, he."

She let it die. She couldn't say it again and Dean couldn't hear it. He kept thinking, _by the juke_, wondering desperately if his brother had killed a man over a song.

"Where is he?" Dean demanded. "Tell me you have him, Ellen, tell me he's handcuffed in the back room."

A staticky moment of silence, then Ellen was saying brokenly, "No, he made it out. He. He broke Andy's nose when they tried to grab him. He's in the Impala, he was headed north."

"Oh Jesus, Ellen." Dean's stomach suddenly heaved, shock wearing off and letting the visceral assert itself. Sam had cut someone's throat. The Roadhouse would be painted in blood. A horror movie of their very own.

"I know," she told him. "I'm so sorry, Dean."

Dean flinched, couldn't hear that again either, and stammered, "I gotta go, I gotta get him," before hanging up on her. He didn't know how he was ever going to look Ellen in the eye again.

He half-ran to the cell block, fumbling with his keys and shouldering the door open. "Max!" he yelled, distantly surprised that he actually knew the kid's name.

The rookie jerked up on the bunk of the cell closest to the door, narrowly missing racking his head. He blinked owlishly at Dean, mostly asleep and Dean was hammering under his skin, he didn't have _time_ for this.

"Get the fuck up. Get up, get. Call Bobby and Doc Masters and meet them at Harvelle's Roadhouse. Are you fucking getting up? Go to the Roadhouse. Gordon Walker's been murdered. Hey, hey, c'mon. Wake the fuck up."

The rookie boggled at him, forcing his heavy eyelids up. Dean glared at him, half his body through the door and the other half striving for the exit. "Do you understand what I just told you?"

The rookie nodded quick, a look in his eyes like he wasn't a hundred percent sure he wasn't dreaming, but Dean didn't care as long as he did what he was told.

"Tell Bobby I went after Sam," Dean said.

"Your brother Sam?" the kid asked, latching on like it was the clue that would crack this whole case wide open. For some reason undiluted rage flashed through Dean, making his fingers clench on the door.

"Just do it. Don't say his name, just." Dean stopped. He wasn't helping anybody right now. He left without another word.

The night barreled into him, the lancing cold on his face, and Dean had forgotten his coat but he didn't go back for it. He ran to his cruiser, almost losing everything on a patch of black ice, and jumped in, peeled out. He hit the lights and siren and went screaming north out of Kingston.

North, and Dean realized belatedly, _canada_. Sam was making a run for the border, and if he made it, Dean would never see him again. Sam would vanish like a white feather in snow, never again say the name Winchester out loud.

Dean stood on the gas. He was already into the outskirts, the speedometer's needle shivering at one hundred and ten miles an hour. He tried to calculate what kind of head start Sam had gotten, what the Impala's limits were and how long Sam could push her to them. Dean had basically rebuilt her engine piece by piece over the past ten years, and he knew in his heart that he would never catch her if she didn't want to be.

Snowbound trees streamed past, strobed in red and blue. Occasionally there would be taillights, red as eyes, pulled over onto the shoulder as he flew by. The siren sounded unearthly, a werewolf's howl climbing towards the moon. It was something around four hundred miles to Saskatchewan, backcountry interstate all the way through both Dakotas.

Every car Dean saw ahead of him caused his heartbeat to stutter and clutch. At first almost buried in the dark, taillights would swim clear, far far down the road. Dean pushed his cruiser faster, long draining minutes passing as he caught up, got close enough to see that the lights were too close together, the shape of them all wrong. Dean could tell his car in the pitch black from a hundred yards. He could pick her out from the sound of her engine, if he could hear anything above the wail of the siren.

Dean thought about the car, trying not to think about Sam. Trying not to picture the Sunday a month from now, or five years or fifteen or twenty, when he would drive to the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls and sit across from his brother at a metal picnic table riddled with dents, studying Sam's new scars and tattoos, both of them trying not to cry.

Sam was out there ahead of him. Dean's world was the rural highway, steady headlights and whisking cherry-top and snow and moon. His defenses faltered, flickered, and he imagined the drive home, Sam chained in the back. Sam would beg Dean through the thick mesh, he would pull out every dirty trick. Slam his bound hands on the metal right behind Dean's head, tell Dean that he loved him, swear that it wasn't like he'd been told.

Dean got off that train of thought as quickly as he could, punching himself in the forehead a few times. He wove into the southbound lane to get around a brief caravan of semi-trucks. He was just over the North Dakota state line.

He thought for awhile about Gordon Walker, a bad person who hadn't deserved to die bloody on a barroom floor if only because no one really did. They used to go out drinking in high school, him and Dean, out at the ravine on the bed of Gordon's pick-up, a rifle and a cluster of glass bottles to be made sacrifice. Gordon was an awesome shot even in the dark, got better the more beers he got in him. Dean thought he was a good guy for awhile, but Sam had always hated him.

Gordon turned out less than right, unnecessarily cruel beneath his laidback calm, stomping truckers who gave him shit and beating up on his wife, who stood all of four feet ten and wouldn't have broken a hundred pounds wearing steel-toed boots. Dean admitted to Sam that he'd been right about Gordon the first time he was actually on duty when the domestic call came in, and had had to stand in the neat little house with their class picture framed on the wall and see her swelling once-pretty face for himself. Sam had huffed wordlessly, 'course I was right, but he ended up kicking the shit out of Gordon outside the Spoke a couple weeks later, a fight widely agreed to be mutually instigated. Dean didn't say anything, didn't bawl him out for brawling like usual, and bought a few sixers of Sam's brand without making a big deal out of it.

_encouraged him_, Dean thought, and it made him jerk, pain blooming suddenly under his ribs. It was like he'd been numb up until now, like a landmine set off. What had he done to Sam, buying him beer since he was fourteen years old, toothlessly condemning the violence worsening in him like a blood disease, bailing him out of jail and bringing him a damn _sandwich_? Was this his punishment? Dean had never said no to Sam, not really, not once. Let Sam do anything he wanted, even knowing that Sam's impulses ran counter to his welfare, Dean couldn't stop him.

And even this last, letting Sam jerk him off in a motel room in Lawrence and kiss him in a prison cell (what had Dean been _thinking_, oral sex like Sam's reward for getting arrested) and fuck him all over their house. Sam had pushed, chipped away at Dean for weeks. He'd talked him into it, all huge hands and foggy eyes. And Dean had known that you had to be crazy to want this with your brother, literally insane to wish this on your family, and he'd known that Sam was already crazy enough, but he went right along. Obsessed with Sam's smart sneering mouth and the diagonal cuts of his hips, Dean had damned his brother, and so had damned them both.

There were lights ahead, town lights wavering and blurry and Dean thought it was just exhaustion until he went to rub his eyes and his fingers came away wet. He felt his cheeks, slick to the touch, wondering how long he'd been crying.

He'd ridden the tank dry and he had to stop for gas, wide spot in the road called Belfield. Freezing in his thin uniform shirt, Dean left the pump running and went to ask the clerk if he'd seen a '67 Impala pass by any time recently. All Dean got in response was a shrug, the clerk noting, "It's dark out," like that answered everything.

Dean ran circles around his cruiser, trying to stay warm as he waited for the pump to click. His heels skidded on the ice, his service revolver riding shotgun and the empty holster banging against his hip. It felt like his lungs were barely working, like the air was too cold to be properly inhaled. It was been the dead of winter for as long as Dean could remember.

Back out on the highway, Dean felt some of his initial panic scratch back under his skin. He had taken too long, getting the gas and not moving, not closing the gap. Sam was already over the border, lost to him. Dean would receive blank postcards for the rest of his life, scenes from all over the world, and he would stand at the mailbox searching each for clues, for patterns in the pictures and the postmarks and the captions and the stamps, and Dean would come up empty-handed every time. Sam would die at some point, in decades maybe or only a few short months, and all Dean would know was that the postcards had stopped coming.

Dean would never catch him. The Impala was built to outrun. Like Sam, she was designed for flight.

The night passed, lifelong and cancerous by the end. Dean's eyes burned. He went a hundred miles trying to define the feeling in his chest and the closest he got was that it was like yearning over a corpse. It was like Sam had died in his arms.

He broke over a shallow rise, and down in the valley headlights flared in the graying dark. Dean's breath caught. There was a car down there, getting back on the highway and speeding up and Dean watched the lights accelerating smooth and even, great pieces of dim road swallowed up under the wheels. That steady humming growl, Dean knew all about that.

The pedal was already on the floor and Dean couldn't go any faster, but he strained over the steering wheel, peering ahead. He rocketed past the crossroads where the other car had been, fresh dirt tire tracks bent onto the interstate. Sam had stopped; Sam had _waited_ for him.

Dean pulled nearer, mile by mile then yard by yard. It was a true chase now, adrenaline and anticipation cut loose. The Impala's taillights grew, an endless traveling shot. They blew past a sign that said 'Canadian Border 20 MI 32 KM.' It was mostly prairie out here, flat and stale and so full of nothing it ached.

Dean could taste his heart in his mouth. He killed the cherries and siren, rolled down his window so that he could hear the roar of the Impala as he closed in.

They were just a few miles shy of the border, just a few car lengths apart, and Sam took his foot off the gas. The Impala slowed swiftly, and Dean had to punch his brakes, still hunched over the wheel so he could be that extra foot closer.

The Impala rolled onto the shoulder. She came to a stop.

Dean pulled up right behind and sat still for a moment, his headlights pouring over the car, steam boiling out of the Impala's muffler and the taillights staring back at Dean unblinkingly. His throat felt like sandpaper, his pulse a terrible racket in his head. He had to go arrest his brother now, because Sam had killed someone.

His baby brother. The very best part of Dean, the only reason he tried to be brave and honest and too tough to fuck with, the only good thing that had ever happened to him and look at them now. Dean wasn't sure he'd be physically able to do it, especially not if Sam fought--_oh god sammy please don't fight_.

Dean reached blindly for his service revolver, sliding it into the holster but leaving the snap undone. He got out of the cruiser and the cold assaulted him, a slamming arctic wind that plastered his shirt to his body and dug at his exposed skin. He started shivering so hard and deep. One hand on his revolver, he moved towards the Impala, legs stiff and unsure.

The driver's door opened, and Sam unfolded himself, turning to Dean with a gut-wrenching expression on his face.

"Dean," Sam said like a moan, over the screech of the wind. He staggered towards Dean and Dean went to him instinctively, catching Sam's arms.

"Sammy."

Sam's biceps like stone under his hands, and Dean pressed against Sam's shoulders, his neck, unable to help himself. Sam should feel different, his skin should be cold or his eyes dead, but he was just as ever, almost vibrating he was so warm and that wrecked look on his face, streaked and sticky with tears. His coat was open and Dean could see rusty streaks of blood on his shirt and he stared for a long minute, his mind gone echo-silent and awed.

"I'm sorry, Dean, I didn't mean to." Sam was clutching at him, huge hands folded over Dean's arms and they were the only places he wasn't freezing to death. "I don't understand how this happened to me."

"'s okay, Sam," Dean said without thought. Sam moaned, crumpling against Dean and his weight staggered Dean back a step.

He locked his arms around Sam's body. Buried his face in Sam's shoulder and had to force his gorge down, his body wracked by the cold, the desolate feeling of holding a murderer in his arms.

"I gotta take you back, Sammy," Dean said muffled. He bit the coarse fabric of Sam's coat, twisting hard. Sam's hair swept across his cheek as he shook his head.

"No, no, you're gonna come with me."

Sam's hands palmed across Dean's head, long fingers curving and pressing at the base of Dean's skull. It made Dean feel deranged, like Sam was changing him, molding him the way he wanted. He moved his head in an abortive shake, saying no, no way.

"Please Dean, you gotta." Tugging at the back of his neck, Sam pulled Dean's face up, forcing Dean to watch him beg. "Can't do it without you, you gotta come."

Something cratered in Dean, and he made a pained noise, an inchoate half-cry. Sam was all savage fell eyes, red-tipped nose, pleading mouth. His hands felt like cuffs on the back of Dean's neck, the broken cloud of his breath mixing with Dean's between their bodies.

"You have to go to jail," Dean said, unable to summon more than a whisper and it was almost lost in the wind. "You killed Gordon, Sammy, you. You can't leave."

Sam half-gasped, tears leaking randomly from his eyes. He shook his head, jostling Dean a little. "Don't, don't say that, Dean, you wouldn't do that to me."

Dean tore away from his brother, having difficulty thinking straight with Sam that close. The cold attacked again, redoubled and debilitating. Dean hunched into his shoulders, battered by the wind. He wondered if Sam was telling the truth. Four hundred miles between them and Kingston and Dean wondered if he could really take Sam all that way just to see him thrown in prison for the better part of the rest of his life.

"I can't just let you disappear," Dean said. He clung to that, repeated it to himself like some kind of nonsense childhood incantation, _can't let you disappear_.

"So you're gonna put me in a cell?" Sam asked, thick with disbelief and god, everything else.

"Sam, you're, please, you can't ask me-"

"That's my _life_, you couldn't. I'd rather you shoot me where I stand."

Dean's hand flew off his gun, where he hadn't even realized it had been. Sam caught it, his eyes flicking down and then up, incandescent. He took a step towards Dean, daring him. Dean couldn't move except to shatter apart from the cold.

"Get in the car," Sam said. "Just. Can't you see? We'll just keep going for awhile, thousands of miles, Dean, anywhere. Nobody will know who we are. We won't have to be brothers and I. This won't have happened. None of it, we'll be clean. Made new. It'll be enough, I swear to you it will, so please, please, Dean, get in the car."

And Dean could see it, scrawled all over Sam's face, promised in the lines of the Impala at his back. The small space around them was drenched in light from the cruiser, casting Sam in steeply angled shadows, and Dean read the highway in his eyes, a road unrolling straight-shot and deathless, gas stations and diners and motel rooms populating the refugee life Sam wanted for them. Sam at his side, every day and every night, the only familiar face in a country of strangers, and he was right, no one would know they were brothers. No one would know about the blood on Sam's shirt.

It would be between them and God.

Dean covered his mouth with the back of his hand, turning his face down and away. A pit was opening up in him, something that had happened before, on a charred front lawn in Lawrence and in a hospital corridor in Sturgis, this horrific yawning abyss as bottomless as need. He knew what he had to say but he didn't think his mouth would let him.

"No," Dean told his brother. "No, we're not gonna do that."

Sam crumbled, his face going and then his shoulders. He swayed, giving Dean a look of devastation so acute it felt like a blade. Sam's mouth moved, formed the word _please_ again and pushed it out towards Dean, and Dean didn't know if he should blame the wind or the tidal rush in his own ears or Sam for not giving it voice, but he couldn't hear it.

He shook his head anyway. There was something stuck in his throat, small places on his face that burned and he thought he might be crying and the tears might have frozen. He thought that seemed appropriate.

Sam broke, jerking around with an anguished sound and reaching for the Impala. Dean's instincts snapped, his numbed juddering hand snatching at his weapon and he drew, folded his left around his right.

"Sam!" A cry, a thing ripped loose from his throat. "Don't."

Sam turned. He was openly weeping. Hands like claws, gesturing helplessly at Dean and casting sinister shadows on the asphalt. Dean had never seen him in more pain.

"Do it, do it or let me go and don't, don't let me go, Dean, please."

Dean's whole arm shook, worse than the rest of his body, the gun still pointed down and to the side. He stared at Sam and his mouth worked but nothing came out. He imagined raising his weapon, pulling the trigger, a small hole in the center of Sam's chest bleeding smoke. His hands loosened, went slack all at once, and his gun clattered to the ground. Sam's face twisted again, and another piece of Dean came tearing free.

"Oh god," he said, strangled, and covered his face with his hands. All he did was shake; all he was was cold.

Dean heard Sam's steps coming towards him and he wanted to shove him away, not let Sam touch him because it would be the last time and Dean, he just couldn't. But Sam's hands landed hard and solid on his shoulders and Dean fell into him without thought, that perfect addictive heat of Sam out here in this wasteland.

Sam pulled Dean's hands away, took Dean's face in his own and pressed a kiss to his forehead. Dean shut his eyes as tight as they would go, tasting salt on his lips. He leaned against his brother, rested all his weight for a long moment. _sam_, Dean thought, kinda stunned and quiet, like it was a new word he was learning, a shibboleth for the next life. _sammy_.

Then Sam was pulling away, whispering Dean's name over and over without seeming to realize it. His hands slid off Dean's face, and Dean immediately started trembling again. Sam tried a heartbroken smile, pulled his coat off and wrapped it around Dean, his hands fumbling on Dean's chest.

"Comin' out here without a coat, you idiot," Sam told him softly. He touched Dean's face, the fine skin over the line of his jaw.

Sam moved away, back to the Impala. Dean watched him go, Sam's coat heavy with his warmth and his smell and Dean was standing under it, still shaking.

Sam opened the door, looked back. He raised one hand to Dean, his lips moving but Dean couldn't make it out, and then Sam was sliding into the Impala. Dean jolted forward, his mouth falling open.

"Wait," Dean said, but his voice was destroyed and hardly audible to his own ears. "Wait, Sam, what'd you say?"

The car door slammed. The cold had gotten in Dean past skin and blood and muscle and bone and he couldn't move, saying his brother's name again and still too low, still not good enough.

The engine roared. Filled Dean up like grace, a momentary breath of hope and salvation, but that left with the Impala. Taillights shrinking away like the thing in Dean that had believed the world and his brother were both inherently good, and Dean watched until they disappeared.

He pushed his arms through the sleeves of his brother's coat, buttoned it up to the neck. He picked up his gun and looked down at it for a long while.

Dean looked back up. He didn't feel like crying anymore. His voice was back, and though it didn't really matter at that point, he said out loud:

"Come back, Sam, I didn't hear what you said."

The wind howled. Dean stood on the side of the road, as far north as he'd ever been. He thought maybe he would go after Sam and make him repeat it, hold Sam down until Dean had every lie and promise, every fraction of Sam down to his last breath, but instead he thumbed the safety on and got back in the car.

It was an awful long drive home. The sun rose over the badlands; it was the next day.

THE END

Endnotes: So, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called 'Highway Patrolman,' and twenty-five years later I tried to do right by it.

My name's Joe Roberts I work for the state

I'm a sergeant out of Perrineville barracks number 8

I always done an honest job as honest as I could

I got a brother named Frankie, and Frankie ain't no good

Now ever since we was young kids it's been the same come down

I get a call on shortwave Frankie's in trouble downtown

Well if it was any other man, I'd put him straight away

But when it's your brother sometimes you look the other way

Me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'

Nothin' feels better than blood on blood

Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played

"Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would

Man turns his back on his family he just ain't no good

Well Frankie went in the army back in 1965

I got a farm deferment, settled down,

took Maria for my wife

But them wheat prices kept on droppin'

Till it was like we were gettin' robbed

Frankie came home in '68, and me, I took this job

Yea, we're laughin' and drinkin'

Nothin' feels better than blood on blood

Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played

"Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin', teach him how to walk that line

Man turns his back on his family he ain't no friend of mine

Well the night was like any other, I got a call 'bout quarter to nine

There was trouble in a roadhouse out on the Michigan line

There was a kid lyin' on the floor lookin' bad bleedin' hard from his head

Was a girl cryin' at a table and it was Frank, they said

Well I went out and I jumped in my car and I hit the lights

I must've done a hundred and ten through Michigan county that night

It was out at the crossroads, down round Willow Bank

Seen a Buick with Ohio plates behind the wheel was Frank

Well I chased him through them county roads till a sign said

Canadian border five miles from here

Pulled over the side of the highway

And watched his tail lights disappear

Me and Frankie laughin' and drinkin'

Nothin' feels better than blood on blood

Takin' turns dancin' with Maria as the band played

"Night of the Johnstown Flood"

I catch him when he's strayin' like any brother would

Man turns his back on his family he just ain't no good


End file.
